Dear Family Circle,

We are all enjoying a good degree of health this beautiful morning. I will answer Carries questions now for fear I might not have room later.

Father, Uncle Jimmie, and Mr. Tart, with their familys started in covered wagons from Portsmouth Va. to Ill. Sept,1834 and arrived in the vicinity of East Peoria in Oct after a journey of seven weeks. We crossed the Ohio River at Gallipolis. That brought us into Ohio. We went through the black swamp in Indiana. One night in a storm father came very near to losing his life (he was 29 years old at that time) a treefell and brushed his back in falling.

There were other families in the company besides the three in the start. One named Hodges. They thought too much time was wasted by not traveling on Sunday. The result of not resting their horses one day in seven, they gave out and our company overtook and passed them.

Father lost his hat on the broad prairies of eastern Ill. and went back to find it. The wagons went on but soon went to camp for the night. He found his hat but slept that night in a hay stack. At camp they fired off the guns but he could not hear the sound, but could see the flash of light and thought it was lightning. He was lost the next day. There was a great commotion in the camp untill he was in sight sometime that day.

William Drury Mrs. Tarts brother was with them. Aunt Sarah Willis and Shadrach Green was with father and mother.
They had 3 children James aged 8, Richard 4, and Amos about 2, Rebecca the 2nd child having died in Va. aged 22 mo.
James died in 1836 aged 10 yrs. Mother died June 1835 aged 28 yrs. Uncle Jimmie had 5 children James aged 13, John 11, Richard 8, Mary 4, and Lucy 1.
Uncle Jimmies wife Eliza Jarvis died a year or two after arriving in Ill.

Father moved from the timber East of Peoria to Washington in the fall of 1841.

With love to all I remain your brother , Richard Waughop