Gamble Letter #2

While the Gambles eventually settled in St. Vincent, as the summer progressed in 1878, the family continued to live at Emerson for the time being.

Read about their daily life, and how history intersected that life for one brief moment...

Emerson
July the 22, 1877

Dear father and Mother if yous are Alive and there yet I want to know Why you did not answer our letter I Wrote to you the day after we landed here and has been watching Day after day and still no letter if you expected of letter every day and dit not get it wouldent yous be uneasy we are all well and I am afraid to hope yous are the same as I know there is something the matter or you would have wrote be fore this We all like here splendid nothing would induce us to go back this is in my estamation the best country we have ever been in [6 lines cut out] there was a man had a garden planted with potatoes and we bought them. We gave him twenty five dollers for three months of the house and the garden house rent is very high here flouer is from to and a half to three dollers a hundred 8 pound of sugar for a doller tea the same as there butter fifteen cents a pound eggs fifteen cents a dosen cord wood three dollers a cord fourt feet oak and bech Alick is working in a brick yard at one doller and twenty five cents a day and little Alick is worth about 50 cents a day doing messages Eliza is hired at 8 dollers a month and [5 lines cut out] things is Deer here but if you Do any thing for them you are wel paid there is plenty of work here for any one thats willing to work We paid twenty six dollers for a stove furniture is very high here We could not give the price for it so we do with out We have not even a chair we got benches made people here with a garden the sise of yours in Beverton takes from eighty and a hundred bushels of potatos of it the best land in thorah couldent be compared to this they most of them has a Coupple of cans and a garden adn they can live comfortable I am glad we came here We were to long about Beaverton there is four churches too taverns four stores it is as big as Beaverton was when we went to it I get wood handerer for the fire not I could there I would register this then to make sure you will get it and I will wait patently for an answer this is the place to rais cabbages and all kind of vegetbles the strawbery was as plenty as the raspberrys there alick Made four dollers selling them at twenty five cents a quart there is to railways coming in here next spring emerson is on the banks of the red river and plenty of fish in it for them that has time to catch them there calles fourt boats there every day coming and going from fishers landing to Winipeg sitting bull that we used to read about bees in with his men in the village often dressed up with fethers and bead and furrs and has a war dance* befor the stars right in the street this is the truth I have been telling you so you may rely on it

Mary Ann

* It's quite likely it was actually the Ghost Dance being done...