Jefferson Quotes & Family Letters

After experiencing great anxiety about you and Browse we were made happy last week by receiving four letters, one from your Brother of the 6th of January, and three from you, dated the 24th and 28 of December, and the 12th of January. Yours were some what in a mutilated state, however we made out to decyipher them; The two letters you directed to Briugiers Office arrived safe, your Father answered one of them the 20th of January and inclosed a bill of lading in of the box which contained your sword, dirk, and a few trifles which went in the ship brig Pheobe Ann, of New York, directed as you desired to Mr John Dewitt & &—I hope you will be pleased with it them, we opened the box and thought them neat and elegant, though I do not profess to be a connoisseur as it is the first sword I ever had in my hand.—A great numb[er] of a Americans are establishing them selves in every part of this Country, they assure me, that even cotton is a mine in comparison to any crop that can be cultivated out of Louisiania, I have no doubt but with negroes and your Fathers experience you would secure an independance, he is determined to established himself as soon as possible on a large sugar Estate, but he must have more nigroes and some money, and at present he cannot command either. Mr Tilghman who has purchased a plantation on [. . .] the Bayou, Told me that Mr Fitzcher of Maryland, had proposed to a Gentleman [. . .] who had been a schoolmate of his, to take one hundred of his negroes, establish a plantation in this country and send him half the revenue, yet he refused the offer though he was without fortune, I thought of you at the moment, and wished that some of those great slave holders would put it in your power to enrich yourself in a like manner. This morning I received a letter from Mr Nott, on the 14th of this month he remitted four hundred dollars to Philadelphia, to the house of [. . .] Waln and Morris, he wrote to Browse by the same mail, one hundred and fifty of that money is intended for your Grandmother. I cannot deny myself the satisfaction of quoting a few lines from his letter which made my heart palpitate, “I have received a few lines from your Son from West Point in reply to my letter making him the small remittance, from the manner and stile of his writing I should presume he is him an accomplished youth from whom much is to be expected, and that your fondest hopes may be realized is the prayer of &[C.”] The greatest good that I can ask for you my dear Child is, that you may hereafter be blessed as you now bless Your Mother your Grandmothers last letter was dated the 12th of December I have never been so long without hearing but I console myself with the hope that her letters have miscarried; my Mother is confined to her chamber with a bad cold, and little Mary ought to be, for she has a dry cough she has recovered the use of her leg perfectly¹ this winter has been intolerably changeable.