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Minneapolis, Nov 26/56
Dear Mother,
I am here for the purpose of taking Mary home. She has been spending a week or two with Kate and Mrs. Hoag. We will start in a day or two, Kate and John are well and are growing fat. Kate in particular, as for ourselves we are all well and in good spirits. Ginnie has grown to be quite a large girl and during Mary�s absence has astonished me with the aptitudes she displays at house keeping. She baked bread and does the washing and all other things most admirably. You need give yourself no uneasiness on our account, we are living very comfortable in a well built log house with plenty of room, well warmed with a good large stove and plenty of wood at the door. We have about one hundred bushels of the best potatoes that you ever saw in the cellar that
(____?____) in our garden, plenty of pumkin (sic) and some turnips, a barrel of pork and two hundred pound of beef, and under our bed we have seven barrels of good flour and two sacks of corn meal and besides all this I can get just as many rabbits as we can eat so that with all this along with our milk we have an abundance of food. I wish you were here to help us eat it.
I have just finished Mr. Pollack�s house and he is in it, he has been living with us for six or seven weeks back and his wife and five children, so you may know we were pretty thick but went along quite happily and contented, in fact we have had all along plenty of company, "Grimshaw's" Grove has become quite a point. I am on the outpost of civilization and every one knows that Bob Grimshaw is always ready to share his hospitality with any clever fellow and there are many such, that comes along, we leave on hand a meal and a spare bufalo (sic) robe all the time and hope to share it. I have become a finished pioneer. As strong as a bear and feel myself a match for one or half a dozen indians, but, by the way, we are not troubled with them. Mary is better contented now than she was at first and I think she will like this mode of live, at any rate she will in the future direct our mode of live, for she is a jewell (sic) of the first water and I will yield to her desire, but at present I think we will stay and develop our farm.
Mr. White has his wife here and is comfortable situated in his house. She proves to be quite a good neighbour, Mr. Craig I suppose will be out in the spring, we will then have seven settlers in our place and others will come. I am afraid we will get so thick that we will have to go to the west.
My farming operations are as follows: We have a first rate garden containing one acre of land just in front of the house, it was ploughed in the spring and cropped ploughed this fall for the action of the frost this winter. We have nine acres of land broke last spring on which was corn and on the same I intend to sow wheat and oats next spring. I have contracted with Mr. White to fence me forty acres with good post and rail fence and I intend to have the whole of that ploughed and planted with corn, potatoes, buckwheat. We have two horses, two yoke of oxen, one cow and calf, and by the way, our cow will have another calf in about a month. We have six chickens and a young brood about half grown, a first rate hunting dog and two good stables, plenty of hay and fodder. I intend in the spring to enlarge our stock of cows to ten head and get some pigs. Probably some sheep and some turkies (sic). We have a good farm containing about twelve acres of wood and twenty five acres of the finest meadow on which I can cut three ton of good natural hay to the acre, the balance of the place is in fine upland prairie making in all 160 acres with stream of good water running through the whole. I believe I have now told you all that is interesting and will close with my love to all the family and my sincere regard to all my friends, tell Arthur that he need not fear of me placing my light under a bushel as he intimated in one of his letters. He (____?____) has not yet to learn that the most profound thinkers and the greatest statesmen that our country has given birth too, have and are not following the same pursuits of live that I am not, and I remain your son,
R.E.Grimshaw
Additional note on same letter of REG 11/26/56
Mr. Grimshaw leaves space for me to say that I have no where in so new a place as Grimshaw seen three more pleasant or prettier homes that those of Grimshaw�s, White�s, and Pollack�s or families more comfortable situated in so short a time than theirs.
I have recently visited the settlement and was surprised at the progress they have made and the conveniences with which they have surrounded themselves. I am happy to be able to certify to their success.
Yours truly, C. Hoag
the following post script is written in pencil and appears to be REG handwriting. Some corrections were made to body of letter in pencil.
The new road to Fort Ridgley goes just by our door and I am informed it will be much traveled