that I address you at this time. . . . May Heaven reward you, if indeed I am a disciple of Christ. I was driven to fear that the amount for my salary in Oregon would require my stay in this State so long that I should be driven to cross the wide prairies of the West with my young family in the dead of winter or fail of being ready to leave with the caravan in the spring. I also expected to be compelled to leave the ministry in part to teach through the intervening time, but, by your suggestion, cheerfully take this opportunity to request the Board through you to appoint me as one of their missionaries for the term of six months in Iowa, as I desire to devote that amount of time to preaching the gospel in that Ter. I shall probably find an important field of labor on the Mississippi River. I think it will require one hundred and fifty dollars to barely sustain my family six months, but think, with fifty dollars from your Board, I can live from the people. I have a wife and four children.[1] Should your Board think fit to make the appointment, you will please forward it to Br. Charles E. Brown, Davenport, Cor. Sec. of Iowa, Bapt. Gen. Association.
I did not find the instructions to applicants for appointment, as your annual report is packed up in my boxes. I thought perhaps your Board would dispense with all the formality ordinarily requisite, as I intend going directly to Davenport and acting in concert with the Board of the Iowa B[aptist] G[eneral] Association, located in that place.
Dear Br. Hill:
We arrived in this place on the 15th of December, and have delayed writing on account of the unfavorable reports respecting the road to Oregon, hoping to be able before this to learn something more satisfactory on the subject. But as yet we
- ↑ The four children were Lucy Jane Gray (Latourette), Timothy Taft, Ann Eliza (Latourette) and Sarah Josephine (Henderson).
