Silas Downing letter to Thomas and Charity Rotch, Cedarswamp L.I. 21st of 1st mo 1817

              B-51-15
page 1

Beloved Friends                     Cedarswamp LI 21st 1st mo 1817
T & C Rotch
                        Our Quarterly Meeting being near at hand, when I expect an opportunity will offer to forward a few ilnes to you, in which I may inform that, I am in the enjoyment of good health as is my dear P except a lameness in one of her knees, which at times occasions a difficulty for her to get about we apprehend it is a Rheumatic affliction. Our son Isaac & his family are also well in health, Stephen and his are also generally well, tho the meazels have lately made its appearance in his family, and probably that complaint will come to us also.    Our daughter Sarah is in health and her husband also his name is Samuel Weekes, they reside with his father about two or three miles from us they remain unsettled, and sometimes talk of Ohio, as does the other branches of our family, you dear friends are often the subject of our converse, and if some of us had means to fly to your abode, it would readily be effected, and none I believe would more gladly see and spend some time with you whose company in times past has been truly consolating, and I believe would be so again was there a way to obtain it, how do you fare in that new settled Country, does the knowledge of the truth spread and prevail among you, to the Joy & comfort of the sincere travailers to that City whose walls are Salvation, and her gates praise, I sometimes cherish a hope that in the new settled countries the inhabitants will out strip those in the old settled places in the work of real religion, for truly I think there is but little advance made therein among the people in these parts, and indeed the