Hugh and Elizabeth Barkley, Killycogan, Portglenone, County Antrim, to his sister and her husband, Adam and Ann Stewart, Emsley [Elmsley] Township, Leeds County, Smoths Falls, Upper Canada, 20 August 1846
Hugh and Elizabeth Barkley, Killycogan, Portglenone, County Antrim, to his sister and her husband, Adam and Ann Stewart, Emsley [Elmsley] Township, Leeds County, Smoths Falls, Upper Canada, 20 August 1846
Description
[Letter text incomplete. It is uncertain whether this is an extract from a letter or the only surviving text from the original manuscript]. Author relates that they lost both their early and late potato crops to blight disease in July. He sees that by November there will be no bread or seed potatoes to be had. While people were claiming cures and explanations for the blight he was consigned to the sure fact that the disease and thus impending famine was from an angry God. [Kerby Miller notes that the recipients had emigrated to Canada in 1834 and rented a 200-acre farm. Both familes were Presbyterian and Tory].