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their children and themselves in a condition of poverty that at any moment may result in beggary, it goes still further.  All that I know of this class have but one room, and it is small, ill-ventilated and full of smoke and filth.  The inevitable tendency of such a state of things is to produce nice, idleness, disease and death in very many cases.  It is my opinion that there is nothing so [[?]] to the future prosperity of the Freedpeople than their inclination to congregate in towns, and I have used every possible method to prevent their gratifying this inclination in my Sub-District but any efforts have been only partially successful, still I believe that the evil prevails due to a less extent than in most these parts of Virginia.

A number of old colored persons have come into Rockbridge (from the adjourning counties, prompted no doubt by the fact that they consider it a kind of Goshen or land of plenty, where any of these people fall sick the overseers of the poor will not take charge of them unless they have been in the country for at least twelve months, and this, with many of them is not the case.  In most instances they are too ill to e removed to the hospital in Lynchburg before I hear of them at all and then when i do hear I must either attend to their wants myself or let them suffer and die as they are unknown to the whites and 2o those of their own color some are [[strikethrough]] with [[/strikethrough]] too poor to contribute anything to their support, and others are wholly indifferent.  Last month an old man from Bedford County died whom a friend and I had to support while he lay sick, and bury him when he died, and, at present I have an old woman from Botetourt laying ill at any expended alone.