Jane C. Washington, Blakeley, to John Augustine Washington III, Mount Vernon, 1847 December 24

Item — Box: 68, Folder: 1847.12.24

Identifier: 2017-SC-008-002

Staff Only

Jane C. Washington, Blakeley, to John Augustine Washington III, Mount Vernon, 24 December 1847

Scope and Contents

Letter written by Jane C. Washington from Blakeley near Charlestown, West Virginia at Christmas time to her son John Augustine Washington III at Mount Vernon. Jane worries over John's recent illness with "chill fever" and reminds him "You now have an overseer, and it surely cannot be so necessary for you to go out at the dawn of day, and expose yourself to the inclemencies of weather in attending to farm business."

Jane writes "I am now quite alone, dear little John A. left me this morning; he is a happy cheerful fellow, and has been with me for some time. I have endeavoured to teach him, and think he has mad some progress both in reading and knitting, with which he is excedingly pleased declaring, he 'was never lonesome since he learned to knit,' the most monotonous and dullest of all employments."

Speaking of the enslaved persons of Blakeley plantation, Jane says "Christmas as you know always occasions considerable excitement, particularly with the poor Negroes, to whom it is a season of temporary freedom and feasting."