The Clayton Tribune (Rabun Co. GA) Thursday, October 3, 1935, Page 1: By L.P. Cross, Editor.

“Below we are quoting the letter that we mentioned last week. [In Luther York's possession, 1935] This letter was written before there were any envelopes or stamps. The letter was folded, addressed and sealed with sealing wax. We have tried to preserve the spelling and punctuation of the letter as near as possible. It was addressed to “Jeremiah York, Clayton Post Office, Rabun County.” [The heading was] “Georgia, Carroll County, April 8, 1838.
“Dear Cousin & Cousins, Uncles & Aunts, my kindred:
I have raised my pen to inform you that we are all well at present, and connection that is here is well also. Thanks be to Providence for His mercies and hoping these few lines will reach you all enjoying the same satisfaction.
After my compliments to you all I will inform you that I received your letter on the 21st day of March 1838 which gave the greatest satisfaction to me excepting the welfare of your little boy for scarcely such a thing has been in the connection before it, for it, will extend wishes the use and satisfaction of life except stop.
I saw a line in your letter that Cousin John says that if he lives he will come to see me you probably may come with him and that gives me greater reconciliation than all I have herd yet for my people is a distance from me, however the most of them, and they visit me not, and the reason why I know not unless you all got tired of me when I come to see you all several times though Cousin Richard come but I believe he run away when he come and when he went off I know he run away---so now you may laugh---but I don’t incenerate on your running away but if you take another mans wife you will have to cut then like he did and so endeth that. I want to keep up the corispondence by letter as long as you will repeat. I wrote in my letter requesting you to write me a line who it was gone to the Florida but I expect you looked over it and sent it not.
I will tell you I cont ask nor answer as much in a whole week with my pen as I could personally in one day but I will tell you some of my ocupation the reason why I have not come to see you all this winter past last fall. I undertook to build me a tolerable fine house and got it reddy to raise and a part of the shingles and a part of the plank for the floor and loft stairs & c and a tolerable good piece of land was to be sold with a smart improvement on it and I bought it and now say Ile make a big crop of corn and then Ile build my house.
So I hired one boy at $8 per month and a man at $10 per month to tend the mill and I and Jim just hook it in the field, and Zach---that is to say Zachariah Walls makes at the mill from 40 to 60 bushels of corn per month and corn is worth $1 per bushel on account of the settlers over the Alabama line which is about three miles to it and I have more open land that we can tend this year.
I shall undertake about 30 acres and yesterday we finished about a half a planting all in corn. I don’t make cotton and if the fruit hits I expect to make about as much as 100 gallons of brandy and so on and all this you may think is simplicity but I thought you would like to hear what I was doing.
And if you will write as plain to me as I have to you I will read it with great satisfaction many many times but my space is getting so short that I cant inform you as much as I want to and I know you are in the same so that I cant hear half as much as I want to know.
I want you to come and see me very bad and I want to see you all badly and I intend to come but don’t know when at this time but you come & stay ten weeks and talk a heep.
Now I cant conceive how you can make much where you live I don’t blame you to want to move and that is what makes me want to see you so bad now I know a heep of things but my space will not permit me to you. So no more but remaining your respective Cousin Isaiah Beck but remember me to Zeffery & John, Uncles & Aunts & all the rest &c. AMEN.”