William Steele, Broughton, to Mary Steele, Exeter, [Friday] 1 June 1770.

Broughton June 1st 1770

   I hope My Dear Polly is now arriv’d with her Uncle thro’ the Care of Providence in safety and health at Exon – I had a very pleasant Journey & got home well before One o’clock Tuesday & had the pleasurable satisfaction to find all as well as could be expected, may a sense of the Divine Goodness be impress’d on our minds & have a proper influence on our Hearts and Lives. – Your Aunt Wakeford with Billy & Polly came hither just before me they go home tomorrow & are to return again next Tuesday (except Billy) & and stay while their House is painted. – Your Sisr Nancy is much more robust than you left her, can go across the room without Assistance, only holding the String loose.

   I cannot help regretting your absence this delightful Season but hope you will enjoy it at Exon. – Mrs Lee’s two Children are under inoculation, but I suppose it will be over before you go to their House, Mrs Wakeford has wrote to her to call on you, so that I suppose you will hear of them soon unless any thing should happen bad to the Children.  I propose to set out for Bristol to morrow & shall expect a Letter from you there, which when I have rec’d will write you again, your Aunt also expects to hear from you.

   I commit you My Dear to the Divine Protection & hope you will not amidst the many Blessings you enjoy be forgetful of the Fountain from whence they flow.

   We all join in due Services to your Uncle & in our affectionate Love to My Dear Polly, whose I ever am in the tenderest Paternal Bonds.       

                                             W Steele

My Compts to Mr & Mrs Blight

You must write home often

Text: Timothy Whelan, ed., Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols.  (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 3, pp. 207-08 (annotated version); STE 4/5/iii, Steele Collection, Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford. Postmark: Andover. Address: To / Miss Steele / To be left with Mr Geo: Bullock / at the Half Moon Inn / Exon / Devonshire. Mentioned above are Joseph Wakeford of Andover and his wife, Mary Steele Wakeford (1724-72), Mary Steele’s aunt and William Steele’s half-sister, as well as their two surviving children, William (1753-1819) and Mary (‘Polly’) (1760-1824). Her son, Samuel (b. 1754), died in 1767.