Western Agency of the New York Juvenile Asylum

1899 Letters from Wards - Pg. 63

"I have kind and good guardians, and I like to live on a farm.  My guardians have four sons and three daughters who are grown up and gone from home.  The daughters live out West, and the sons live near by us, and they are coming home to eat turkey Thanksgiving, and I would like to have you take Thanksgiving with us and see our nice flock of 117 turkeys, and we are going to have a big time on Thanksgiving.  I have learned to ride horseback and to drive a team, and I can do most all kinds of work in the house.  I go to Church & Sunday school.  We have two big ponds this summer and we will have good times skating if Santa Claus brings us skates.  Our guardians are very temperate and neither smoke, chew nor drink, nor will they allow card playing in the house.   I have never seen a drunken man since I came to Iowa.  Do tell the girls and boys in the asylum to come West if they want to have a good time and he will learn to work and will have lots of roast turkey and fried chicken and everything could to eat.  You would not believe how Harvey and I have learned to work this summer.  I have thirteen new dresses."

"I have a horse and I ride to Sunday school and I like to live on a farm.  I help to milk the cows and I drive a team and plow and do all kinds of work on a farm and have finished husking corn and I would not take anything for what I have learned this summer.  I attend church and our preacher talks very loud, but I like to hear him.  Clara and I live together, and have a very nice home."

"Harry and Clara have been attending school and they are having a short vacation.  They seem to like school.  Harry is in the Fourth Reader and Clara in the Third, but in other studies they are together.  Harry is growing very stout, and a boy of better disposition does not live.  He likes farm work, and they are both well satisfied, and do not wish to go back to New York.  Clara has a bright mind and can keep ahead of Harry at school, and is as smart as the rest of them.  The children attend Church with us, and they think the minister "preaches too loud".

Woodburn, Iowa.