Letter: B. Duffield to Joseph A. Murray, 18331
“We had like to be burnt up”
The letter is from 12-year-old Divie Bethune Duffield (1821-1891) the son of Rev. George Duffield of the First Presbyterian Church of Carlisle to his friend 18-year-old Joseph Murray. Joseph was brought up a Presbyterian and received his academic training at Henry Duffield’s Carlisle Institute. Joseph went to Pittsburgh to stay with his Denny relatives and to study at the University of Western Pennsylvania.
Dear Joseph
Carlisle Feb. 1, 1833
“I about a half hour ago received your kind letter and I am glad to hear that you are well and I am also. I am glad to hear of the revival at Pittsburgh. I hope it may continue and many souls may be brought to see their sin and turn to God and own him as their own. As you say in your letter to Mr. Hamilton2 that you were a teacher in the African Sabbath school. I hope your scholars may turn to God.
We had like to be burnt up on Monday. Our boy went and burnt the chimney and we were all upstairs cleaning house at the time and he went to please himself and burnt the chimney and caught the mantel piece in the dining room up above it and we had very hard work getting it out and it burnt a hole the length of my arm. We sent over for Uncle Henry and he told us that there was no danger but we have to get the mantel taken down and get it fixed again for there is somewhat danger of the manel falling down. Mother took and paid him the next morning and sent him off and she was sick all day and not able to get out of her bed. And now George3and I do the work ourselves. Father has gone to Mercersburg for a four days meeting and he will not be back until next week.
Today George and I have been playing with our sleds, hitching them behind wagons. There was a sleigh run off today and Mr. B. was in it and Miss Hoyt and Miss Harriet [Keigly] and the horse ran across the diamond by the Episcopal Church and the ladies set in it as if nothing happened.
I believe that your family is all well for I saw George having your father’s horse (unreadable). There is a little wagon put on runners that goes through town. I went to get on and the old woman with her spectacles on took the butt end of the whip and hit me on the knuckles and then she grinned like a chessy cat at me. There was a boy today on a man’s wagon with some other boys and he thought the man was going to cut him the whip. He was in such a hurry to get out he was running to the other end of the wagon and while he was running to get out he tript and pitched head foremost out of the wagon.
I have not much more to say but old Mrs. Guthrey is dead, the watchmaker’s wife.
The boys in town crowd on the sleighs Sometimes they stall the horses in the [snow.] The roads are not yet broken enough for sleighing. George Brown lives at Mr. Fleming’s now.4 He [carrys the proofs] I believe, but they call him the printers devil. You must excuse my bad writing for father has got the knife with him. We send our love to you—that is George and & I “
I remain your affectionate friend, B. Duffield.
The letter is addressed to Master Joseph Murray care of Harmar Denny, Esq, Pittsburgh, Pa.
James Hamilton, Jr., founder of the Hamilton Library and Historical Association, was born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania on October 16, 1793, the only son of Judge James Hamilton (born 1752 in Belfast, Ireland, died February 13, 1819) and his wife Sarah Thomson, daughter of Rev. William and Susanna Ross Thomson.
1 James Hamilton Collection, Microfilm Roll 37 Box 69,p. 220. Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Microfilm at CCHS.
2 James Hamilton, Jr. (1793-1873).
3 George is George Duffield, Jr. (1818-1888) and is B’s brother.
4 George Fleming was the printer of the Carlisle Herald newspaper who went to the gold fields in California in 1849.