Letter to Dudley Chase
Dear Brother Dudley,
I have no reason for writing this letter but to gratify a never dying love for the best of Brothers; and to express my grateful sentiments for your kind offer to support or pay the bills of extreme of my dear Son your namesake while in College at Hartford [College]. His letter to me lately, [re?] while I was passing thru’ Peoria on the Illinois River, expressed your wish to that effect with so much [?] to my feelings— of late to [?] on the subject of [?] charity from there for my [?] and domestic benefit, and so full of grateful love to you for for your delicate manner of providing your kindness to him and me, this I immediately write an answer in the affirmative of all he delivered and sent it off with my team of gratitude to God & you. What [drives] me in the [?] which his former letters left on my mind that his health is beginning to be impaired by his sedentary life at College and his living in the nearby land eliminate the oracle [?] to marry [?] young with the [?]. You know the feeble [?] of his maternal amenity: and can recollect how much of sorrow I have suffered on that account— but of his letter, written I think soon after leaving College to spend his vacation with his friends in Vermont [?] him a pain in his heart and congruent affection of his [?] in restfulness [be] in such terrors or to recall feelings with him I suffered for so many years during his dear Mother’s life. By there feelings, I was prompted to write an answer the [?] [?] of which was that I would rather he relinquish his studies altogether and return to my home in the west than to see him fall an early victim to the disease under which I feared he would [?] to suffer in the New England climate: What effect this my letter may have had [?] his mind I know not. It may be that he set off immediately for [?]. If so I shall embrace him on my return to the [?]: and he will turn in with me to work for a living.
It will give you pleasure to learn that I am in good health and spirit, not with naming the very ill treatment I have not with from the [?] Board of our Church. When I left home, I saw a good of the [?] blessing of Heaven [?] over [?] on the face of the earth which if gathered in in reason will support our large family thro’ the winter and coming spring, I told you I think in a letter from Peoria. I descended in a S.B. to the landing [?] Runville Schuyler County and spent my next sunday in that beautiful village [?] and [?] the holy ordinance in [their] in Tealing Church. On Monday last I went down the road to the residence of a Mr. Cliff and the [Himman] family about 10 or 12 miles. Here I found all things in a flourishing condition and [?] marry and great offer to have my [?] healed seminary in their neighborhood. This region differs from a great majority of the Illinois lands. It is entirely covered with timber of the finest quality— whitened black oak white bark walnut limit sugar-maple cherry and ash. There is abundance of fine stone for building sand-limestone the best clay in place for bricks the [?] is exceedingly good lying high from the streams which wash a rocky bank. The spring from the sides of the hill are [?] cold and offer they [?] [?] on the table lands which are high 108 feet from the bottom of intervale lands. But the great difficulty with me in the [?] how it will require to remove the timber before you can begin to make things appear pleasant. That much country will in the long run have preference to a prairie location of my seminary I have little doubt; but how can I now 63 years old encounter the [?] of beginning again literally from the thumb. The splendid offer of the gift of 2560 acres of this land to the seminary— 660 of which is to be in a body of which to lay out the town all enduring timber other materials in the spot to erect the town & college [?] immediately in not to be deprived. What will be determined [?] finally I do not know not. The propositions in before me and I shall wait and compare it with the merit of many [?] which are and will in time to be made to me.
The disappointment which I met with in Peoria County I consider now a blessing— it prevented me from entering into contracts which, in the [?] rate of things considering the exorbitant demands for Labour and the [scarce-?] of materials for building round about the Robin, next, would have been detrimentally not [?-ous] to motion. There also I should have been [?] to pay for my lands had the [?] [?-tion] right been granted me for— [?] but here they will be given me; and with all the [?] to [?] he will crowd around the Seminary I can [?] all the [?] of erecting my [?] buildings— may God grant me strength and [?] to do all for the best while I live & when I die which must be soon; may God accept my [?] endeavor to glorify his name— but for my [?] but thro’ the infinite merits of Jesus Christ our Lord & Savior amen. P. Chase
Description
Chase writes to Dudley in discussion of his travels and a plot of land he has found in Peoria County, Illinois to hold his new seminary, presumably Jubilee College which was later founded in the same county.
Rights Statement
