William Steele, Bristol, to Mary Steele, Exeter, [Tuesday] 5 June 1770.

Bristol June 5 1770

   My Dear Polly’s very agreeable Letter gave me (on my Arrival here last Night) inexpressible pleasure & I desire to be thankful for your preservation in journeying as well as my own.  I came from home Saturday noon & left our dear Relatives in as good health as usual Nancy gets stronger every day can almost go alone. – Mr Evans’s Family are all well except little Hugh whose Fits continue  Mrs Page has a Son.

   I am very glad you are so agreeably situated, make my Compts acceptable to Mr & Mrs Blight & remember me to your Uncle.  I have not time (as a person waits for my Letter) to add any thing more than that I commend my Dear Girl to the Divine Protection under which I trust we shall again in due time rejoice together.  I hope to return home again the Close of the Week & am My Dr Child’s

         Ever affectionate Parent

                                 W Steele

I desire you will write home often

I wrote you from Broughton which I hope you rec’d

Text: Timothy Whelan, ed., Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols.  (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 3, p. 208 (annotated version); STE 4/5/iv, Steele Collection, Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford. No postmark. Address: To / Miss Steele / To be left with Mr Geo: Bullock / at the Half Moon Inn / Exon / Devonshire.

References above include John Page, Esq., who was a deacon in Caleb Evans’s congregation at Broadmead (he joined in 1766) and sheriff of Bristol in 1795. His son, Henry Page (1781-1833)(not the one mentioned above), served as assistant pastor at Broadmead as well as secretary and tutor at Bristol Academy, 1802-1817, and later as minister of the Baptist congregation in Worcester.  Also mentioned is the recent birth of Hugh Evans, third child of Caleb Evans and his first wife, Sarah Jeffries Evans.