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    her as “Very Dear Wife,” he retailed to her various bits of family news interspersed with anxious expressions of concern for her:

Your brother Samuel came up last Saturday . . . he is very greatly changed in his appearance for the better, has left Mr. Parker’s Meeting and attends regularly the Baptist Church on Park St.—has resolved, to persue a new course of life—has left all of his profanity and other disagreeable practices—and in fact has the appearance of a Christian We attended Mr. Curtice’s Meeting last sunday and he preached two of his searching practical sermons and Samuel expressed great interest in them, thinks as you and I do that Mr. Curtice is one of the best of men—Saml seems pleased to talk on religion . . . with a very different feeling manifested from what I have ever seen in him before. . . . All that rough almost rudeness in his manners has given place to a sober gentlemanly turn which makes him the dignified brother which you and I so much admire and there is nothing in him apparent that we could wish changed unless it be the removal of a shade of melancholy. . . .

I have been out ransacking the village to try to find something for you and in the box you will find the plunder. I hope it will find your poor sick appetite and shake it hard till it wakes it up and sets it going in good earnest so that when I get home I may find you a good “Freemonter. . . .”

George’s wife has been in just gone out she says she made arrangements last fall to go up and stay with you a while—but George S. did not go away as she had expected and consequently she could not go to you seems very unhappy about her situation, says she will go to keeping house on her own hook soon if nothing new takes place—but I have written a murderously long letter and will close with a long embrace imaginary it is true but still I think I feel it together with the warm kiss of unwavering love.

                                                          Husband
                                                          D. Patterson15

#footnote-1

15 Daniel Patterson to Mary Baker Patterson, 17 February 1857 (archivist estimate), L16251, MBEL. It is not clear from his handwriting whether the last number is a seven or a nine. The reference to Frémont would have been appropriate in either year. Samuel Baker remarried on November 2, 1858, and his reformation may have taken place either as a prerequisite to or as a result of his marriage. His wife was a former missionary who doubtless found his attendance at Theodore Parker’s services reprehensible. The reason for the disagreement between George Sullivan and Martha Rand Baker is unknown, but they did part for a time, and this fact permanently cooled Mrs. Patterson’s erstwhile friendship for Martha. 

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