William Steele, Broughton, to Mary Steele, East Knoyle, [Saturday] 13 December 1777.

Broughton Decr 13th 1777

   I hope My Dear Maria has rec’d her Mo.s Note wrote to excuse my forgetfulness, I intended writing by Wednesdays post but going out in the Morning of course it slipt my Memory.  Our Situation as to health is thro’ Mercy as well as usual.  Your Aunt some days better & some worse I saw the dear Girls Tuesday last they were well & cheerful are to come home Wensday next. Poor Mary is going to see her Mother who they say is just on the Borders of Eternity, awful thought! may it ever be present with us, be deeply impress’d on our hearts & stir us up to a diligent preparation for that important Hour when the Glories of the World shall appear to be what they really are all Vanity & Vexation of Spirit.

   I have sent an Advertisement to the Sarum Journal which I suppose will be in the next three papers, that the Timber at Sedgehill is to be sold at the Black Horse in East Knoyle Wednesday the 31st Inst: – I hope to be with you the Evening before & intend to return home with you Thursday or Friday if a good Providence attend us.  We join in our best Commendations to all the good Family at Knoyle & in the warmest tenders of Parental Love to My Dear Girl whose true happiness is the ardent prayer of her affectionate Father

                                             Wm Steele

Let me hear from you soon

Evening 8 o Clock

Mr Lewis a Minister from Kent who Mr Evans mention’d in a Letter some time since, is just arriv’d to supply us, he came from Bristol Yesterday, brot a Letter from Betsy Ash who is yet there, I suppose he will stay some Sundays.

Text: Timothy Whelan, ed., Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols.  (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 3, p. 286 (annotated version); STE 4/5/lxi, Steele Collection, Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford. Postmark: Salisbury. Address:  Miss Steele / at the Revd Mr Russ’s / East Knoyle near / Shaftesbury. 

"Poor Mary" mentioned above is another individual working in the Steele household. Nathaniel Rawlings was succeeded as minister at Broughton by Josiah Lewis, who came from a congregation in Kent and was installed as minister on 14 October 1778, with Dr. Samuel Stennett, Baptist minister at Little Wild Street, London, and a friend of the Steeles (see Mary Steele's letter to him on this site), preaching the sermon; Elizabeth Ash appears once again at the end of the letter.

William Steele's advertisement mentioned above appeared in the Salisbury and Winchester Journal on 15, 22, and 29 December 1777. The advertisement reads as follows:

Timber

To be sold, on Wednesday the 31st of December instant, at the Black Horse Inn, in East Knoyle, between the hours of eleven and four.

A Qantity of Oak, Ash, and Elm timber trees, as they are now standing at Sedghill, Wilts., in three Lots.

                                                                     Oaks.    Ashes.   Elms.

   Lot 1. On Thomas Scammell’s Farm,            22     58    7

   Lot 2. On Good’s Farm,                              16     14     19

   Lot 3. On John Bracher’s Farm,                    28     61     14

Application may be made to Mr. Thomas Scammell for a sight of the first and second Lots, and to Mr. John Bracher for the third, both of Sedghill.