Letter 27
Date:
August 15, 1883
Sender: Harmen
Jan te Selle
Addressee: Derk Willem te Selle
Firth, Nebr
August 15 / 1883
Dear Respected Brother!
I take the liberty to
write you a letter, as we have not heard from you since Mother's
death. Brother G.J. did write a letter to you, but received no
answer. Whether you got that letter we don't know.
We are now very healthy
and hope to hear the same from you, because health is a big
treasure, which cannot be appreciated enough!
How is brother Tobias?
Is he healthy again? You wrote awhile ago that he was very ill. We
hope for the best. What is he doing now? Is he still working
at the weaving plant or is he on a day to day job? Please write us
something. Then you have subjects to write on and we know what's
going on with brothers and friends. Also, here brother Gerrit Jan
still goes out to work a lot, if he is not too busy with his land.
Albert, his son, does the horses and so he earns many a dollar,
which other people don't make, because it happens all too often
that there is not too much work on the land, because there is no
production of fertilizer and litter for the stable, etc.
If there is one person
handling the horses there is a lot of empty time for the others.
And that two dollars a day as Gerrit Jan earns helps a lot.
His brother‑in‑law
Willem Jonker is now also in America as we learned, in Wisconsin.
He must be thinking a lot of Holland, to consider going back. His
wife's mother and brothers, who also were in America, have gone
back to the Netherlands, truly fools to leave a good country
again!
But labor here is
different than with you, and besides that, many think that they
don't have to work in America, and that's completely wrong. Also,
Willem, that dope, why doesn't he come to Nebraska? He could get
lots of work with Gerrit Jan in the carpentry business and have a
good life!
But let it be, let me
inform you on weather, drought and rain. Let's start with spring.
Spring was very cold and wet in the beginning. And as we were very
busy keeping the weeds out of the corn crop, we had a lot of
difficulty with that. We as well as Jan Hendrik kept enough corn
on the land to have seeds for another year. Whether G.J. did
better, we'll see next Friday when we go visit him.
But it was the wetness
which caused it all, so corn is much later than other years.
