Archive Record
Metadata
Accession number |
2002.035 |
Catalog Number |
2002.035.024.019 |
Object Name |
Letter |
Date |
12 Nov 1871 |
Title |
Letter to T.J. Tidwell from TJ. Sims |
Scope & Content |
Letter to T.J.Tidwell from T.J. Sims re: post Civil War conditions Includes envelope 11/12/1871 Dear Relatives, I received your letter in due time - and pleased to hear from you - and to learn that you got home safe and all right - found all well - and have a prospect of doing well. These times leaves us all well. At present in fact we have had no sickness this year. No doctor has been to our house to see the sick - except Rebecca in the fore part of the year as you know. William Franklin, Eliz. in Georgia. Anah is gone to Georgia. They started say two weeks ago. It will be near Christmas before they return. Has John got home yet? Well we have gathered up our little crops or eat the corn - make about half enough to do us - some ten or twelve bales cotton - it makes me think about quitting the business of farming. Some 15 in number [?] to work and half corn some 10 bales cotton. I think it is time to quit and go at something else. The time is coming when we cannot control labor here in the hills. People that holds the land are getting tired of paying such high taxes and cannot control labor. Lands extremely low - some people are selling off their land in 40 and 80 acre lots to freedmen - giving them three years to pay in - so you see the freedmen are buyin geven when they have not got one dollar to pay with nor even provisions for another year. Some will work out for provisions - sometimes two or three families on the same place. Some work at home, others work for something to eat. Others have houses a little better situated and they can get labor when white men cannot. They will live with a freedman and live on half rations before they will live with white people. So you see they are controlling the labor to some extent and will control it more and more. It is getting up great excitement with them as this is a new arrangement that the people are selling in this way and lands are so low - that the freedmen will soon own a great deal of lands in our hill country. It is not the case with your river lands. I am satisfied that labor will gradually get worse in the hills and the time is coming where we will have to do the work both in the house and on the farm. There are perhaps some that will not get homes but that clap will be such as we will not want - worthless anywhere or in any country. I will close by requesting you to write again soon - show this letter to my old friend GW Arnold and tell him to write without fail. TJ Sims |
People |
Tidwell, Thomas Jefferson Sims, T.J. Arnold, George Washington |
Search Terms |
Agriculture Reconstruction Cotton |
Lexicon category |
8: Communication Artifact |
Lexicon sub-category |
Documentary Artifact |
Inventoried date |
2023-11-27 |