The Bobbitt Family In America
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[7]October 1, 1829
Dear Son: I gladly embrace the opportunity of writing to you once more to inform you that we are generally well, with some exceptions. As to myself, I am at times very poorly, though tolerably well. At present your mother is not to say, very well, no great complaints. Your brother Thomas has been on a journey of 600 or 700 miles, as far as the Arkansas Territory. He rode my Jack horse and the horse died on the way. Thomas came home sick with the ague and a fever, but is on the mend. I want you if possible to come to see us as I shall never be in that country again. I don't mind the postage of a letter if you think it worth while to write and put the letter in the office. My respects to all inquiring friends.
In these early days you paid for a letter when your received it, and not when you sent it. Many of the early pioneer went to the post office and could not afford to pick up their mail so had to pick out their letters of interest very carefully. The letter edged in black became a signal for these people to pick those letters and pay for them as they always carried a death notice of some relative or friend who had departed from life.
The letter also indicates how much traveling and what distances these people traveled by horseback. As near as I can tell from the letters and from the records, Greenberry Bobbitt never visited in Pulaski County Kentucky.
Caleb died in 1830 and Nancy his wife reared the family with the help of Thomas. Thomas Bobbitt married Hannah Gilmore in 1831 and most of the other children married before 1840. In 1841 Nancy was living with her son Alexander Bobbitt in Wayne County Kentucky, and in 1843 Nancy, her son Thomas and his wife, went with other members of the Bobbitt family on the long journey from Pulaski County in Kentucky to Howard County Missouri. I doubt that Nancy ever again saw her sons, John, William, Alexander, or Greenberry.
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