Viewing page 44 of 243

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

this year we had provided upwards of a hundred cords, for this purpose, and have kept three teams at work, from daylight till dark, carrying wood to the destitute, while a host have been supplied with wood at the yard, carrying it away in their arms.  Many families were found who had been without five one and two days, surrounded with little children and some of them sick in bed.

One thing that has contributed to this distress and suffering is the hard hearted measures of resident land owners who have attempted to prevent their gathering even the down-wood rotting upon the ground, and who have filled your ears, as well as my own, with their complaints of "their" woods cut to pieces", while almost every effort to detect the parties engaged in this work has failed, I have sent men, again and again to arrest those engaged in cutting standing wood, and they have found men engaged only in gathering up the down-wood, but the threats of these citizens have deterred the freemen from suffering themselves from this source. 

Again, the insufficient ration furnished is