Mary Steele, Broughton, to her mother, Mary Bullock Steele, [Yeovil,] [Friday] 20 November 1761.

My dear Mamma,

   Your kind Letters are very acceptable to me and I wish I could write to you better than I am yet able, but such as it is I hope will not be displeasing to my dear mamma. I go to School to my Aunt and learn to read and spell and write of her, and also to walk upright. My Pappa was so kind as to buy me a fine blue Satten Hat and Cardinal at London and a Medal of the King and Queen; which I hope I shall endeavor to deserve, I long greatly to see my mamma and hope you will come home in a little time and my Unkle with you.  I conclude with my duty to my dear Unkle and Love to Miss Stephens and Molly Winsor and all my acquaintance. My dear Mammas dutiful Daughter

                                 Mary Steele

I intend to write to Miss Stephens next time Pappa writes you.

Broughton  Nov: ye 20th 1761

Text: Timothy Whelan, ed., Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols.  (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 3, p. 205 (annotated version); STE 5/10, Steele Collection, Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford. No postmark or address page. Mary was eight at the time of the above letter. Her mother would die the following year and be buried at Yeovil, the home of her brother, George Bullock, mentioned above who was Mary Steele’s favorite uncle. Attached to a letter to William Steele from his sister, Anne (STE 3/8/xi), is a note from Anne Steele to young Mary Steele, dated 5 January 1763, during another visit by Mary to Yeovil, not long before the death of Mary's mother. Molly Winsor was a resident of Yeovil and a childhood friend of Mary Steele; she appears in several letters in this correspondence. Like Mary Steele, she was probably a Baptist (she also knew Mary Scott and the Attwaters) and later opened a school for girls in Yeovil.