William Steele, Broughton, to Mary Steele, Yeovil, [Saturday] 9 October 1773.

Broughton Oct.r 9th 1773

My Dear

   According to my promise to write to you this day I take my Pen to acquaint you that thro’ the favor of a kind & gracious Providence I came home in good health Yesterday by Ten o’Clock & had the Satisfaction to find all the Family well except your Aunt who was not so well as she had been for several days before. She is much the same today as yesterday but I think on the whole rather better than you left her. She seems very solicitous to know how long you intend to stay before you return home & hopes it will not be very long remembers her kind love to you & desires you will be careful of your health.

   I presume you have rec’d my Scrawl from Sarum, I believe I put the wrong day to it at the bottom, I suppose my Wits were gone a Wool gathering as I forgot both the day of the Month & the Week. I hope the black wax did not alarm you, it being before the Folks were up I could get nothing else & no more paper. – I hope you will continue the Medicine for your Cough let us hear from you soon & inform us particularly whether you receive any benefit from it, I desire you will walk out often but not far at a time. 

   We all remember you with the warmest Affection, the little Prattlers are at my Elbow & tell me they will write to their Tissey their Selves. – Make our Compts acceptable to your Uncle & am My Dr Polly’s affectionate Father

                                 Wm Steele

My Dear Sister I wish you wou’d come home for I want to see you.  The Kitten is dead and I am sorry for it and so will you, my Love to my dear Sister and to Uncle Bullock. 

                                             Anne Steele

My Love to Dear Sister Polly and to Uncle Bullock  I am glad Papa is come home & should be glad to see my Dear Sister here from your little pratler

                                             Patty Steele

Text: Timothy Whelan, ed., Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols.  (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 3, p. 237 (annotated version); STE 4/5/xxvii, Steele Collection, Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford. No postmark. Address: Miss Steele / at Mr Geo: Bullock’s / Yeovil / Somerset. After a letter was folded (letters were not placed in an envelope at this time), it was sealed with wax. A black seal was used to denote death and bereavement; hence Mr. Steele’s apprehension about Mary’s reception of the letter. Mary’s half-sisters scribbled notes on the last page of the letter: Anne was four and a half, Martha a few months past three.