St. Vincent
July 25th (1878?)
Dear father & mother I now take the oppertunity of addressing a few lines to you hoping this will find yous all well as this leaves us all well at present there is nothing particular going on heare at present the wether is very warm Just now crops never looked better than they do at present our wheat is as high as my head we are busy at the hay we are going to put up a good deal of hay this season we have so much Stock we have thirty five head just now yous think the Midland does a big busness if you seen all the trafick on this road you would wonder there bees ten and twelve engins in every day the yard holds six hundred cars when they take a train to Manitoba there is another coming in from St. Paul there is over a hundred men emplased in the yard alone this was there pay day there was a thousand* men to pay half of them swedes and Norweigns the transfer busnes is all done here for Manitoba there goes five trains a day to Manitoba we have twenty bushels of potatoes planted and they look well we were all at a excursion down red river about twenty miles and had a good time we be all very busey all the time flour is four dollers a hundred butter thirty cents a pound pork twelve cents a pound eleven pounds of sugar for doller cotten cloth and print is very cheap heare good print 8 cents a yard what I used to pay fifteen cents for there dont be so long in writing the next time I must conclude with our kind love to yous all
So good by for the present
Mary Ann
* [By the 1870's] the railroads had begun to spread their network over the State. Jim Hill sent his agent to Europe and Colonel Hans Mattson went over for the State Board of Emigration. Soon the Scandinavians began to pour into the land, lured by booklets whose illustrations were probably the first examples of creative art, the State produced. Immigrant houses were erected by the railroads ; some of these transient homes were large enough to accommodate several hundred persons at one time. By 1880 the census showed a population risen to 780,773, of which 71 percent were Europeans of the first and second generations. - From the American Guide Series, Minnesota: A State Guide