Letter from Anna Jones to Addie Jones October 1866
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the lives of our ancestors.

My dear Sister,

What can I say to you my poor heart is almost broken. Oh Sister, dear darling Sister, you can never know what my feelings were when I stood by his dying bed. His last words were to me. He told me to come to his side, his baby child. He sayed I am dying, but don't cry. He syaed he wanted me to be a Christian and be kind to every body. My Sister, I can't realize that he's gone, my darling angel. Pa is gone, my all. Oh, can it be true, can it be so, that I will never see him again. Oh Sister, I feel like my poor heart will burst with this awful thought that he is layed in the cold grave. I received his last word and received the last kiss from his dear dying lips. I can't write what I feel. I know he received pardon before he died and I know that he is in heaven with my Mother and our dear Sister. He sayed if he had a thousand souls, he would give them all to Jesus. What a sad thought that he is gone. What will I do for my father's love? My darling, my all. Oh, I can't realize it. I sit up with him the night he was lying a corpse all by my self. Grandpa was very sick and they had to be in the room with him. They had to attend to him as long as he lived and that wasn't long after Father died. Pa was buried on Monday and Grand Pa on Tuesday. They had to send to Memphis after a metallic coffin and before they thought the train was coming, they give me some morphine to put me to sleep. I was wild. It never put me to sleep and they took me out of the parlor and they found me out in the yard.

Annie (Oct. 1866)

(This was written to Addie Jones by her sister Anna Emma "Annie" Jones, who later married William Wallace McDowell. Pa is Thomas Jones and Grand Pa is Rev. John Washington "Jack" Jones. My Mother is Mary Blanton Kimbell and our dear sister was Dora Jones, the youngest of Thomas and Mary's children.)