Maria Grace Saffery, Salisbury, to Anne Whitaker, Bratton, [Friday], 24 November 1809.

My ever dear Anna,

   I made immediate inquiries respecting the subject of your last but nurse Ward has been nursing in the neighborhood of Bristol from [where] she is daily expected to return home and when this is the case I will inform myself of her future engagements for your direction.  I am convinced she has not wholly declined her professional practice for she undertakes ye charge of a lady in Endless Street next month.  However I will hasten to procure for you the most explicit intelligence –

   I am thankful to give you a good accnt of matters here as it regards health &c more especially as I could not have done this during the short interval which has elapsed since my last.  I told you then, that Anne had a sore mouth & general illness.  This speedily became sore throats & we feared might have proved to be quinsey.  I suppose it was an affair more like Sparry’s.  A few hours after my alarm for poor Anne I became indisposed myself, & had the next day or two considerable sore throat in my own style from wh I am just now recovered, languor excepted.  Phebe Whitchurch went home very poorly on Sab day but is much better.  Salter & Coombs have had & yet have sore throats, with very little general illness & Sam has been drooping two or three days but is now evidently mending.  I think all the rest are well. – We are indeed by no means objects for yr anxiety at this time, and you have only to enjoy our speedy recovery and acknowledge the mercy to Him to whom I know you feel yourself – indebted for all the goodness he has shewed to your Maria – how vast an amount of obligation!

   A letter or two from Bodenham accompanies this therefore I need not state particulars relative to yr good aunt who was at Meeting last night!!!  Salter is sitting by me and begs compts I suppose she means love  Yr Bror is gone to Downton or Fordingbridge with a Mr Imery from Northumberland who is begging here with  a good case & who is himself qualified by the christian simplicity of his manners to recommend it.  Mr Claypole’s resignation exceeds my hopes this fit of decision must have been like a spasmodic influence on the native constitutions of his mind – well he is a good Man and I am half reproved for this sally when I consider his character and circumstance. It is almost against authority of the priesthood here to consign Mr Edmonson to Bratton, while Newport is destitute.

   Adieu ma douce Amie Writing is not ye act [of] employment for me this afternoon.  My nervous system is yet sensible of the somewhat close confinement of the last week, besides the complicated anxieties  I shall hope [to] write again in a few days to say how I have succeeded with Mrs Ward – remember me very kindly in yr first & second circles & farther on if you please and believe me with no variation but that of perpetual progress,

               yrs in the sacred bonds of friendship

                     Maria Grace Saffery

Novr 24th 1809

Salter is gone out to get ye Cambric. The books are not come from whence you may gather her state of health

Text: Timothy Whelan, gen. ed.,  Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 6, pp. 291-92 (annotated version); Reeves Collection, Bodleian, Box 14.4.(m.), Angus Library. Address: Mrs Philip Whitaker | Bratton Farm | Nr Westbury. No postmark. Anne Whitaker was expecting her seventh child at this time. Saffery appears to be keeping Whitaker’s youngest child, Anne, who had just turned two years of age in early November. Thomas Claypole resigned his charge at Bratton on 14 November 1809. He was replaced by Robert Edminson, who was officially installed on 13 May 1810. The church at Bratton would increase considerably under the latter's ministry to nearly one hundred members. In 1818, he led the church in building two adjoining schoolrooms to accommodate the more than one hundred children who attended the church’s Sunday School.