I love Polly Colton. From what I've read, she was a lot like me. She had even more in common with Grandma Marge. She lost a little baby son and then her eldest died before she did. So much heartache. But she was a strong woman with a keen sense of humor.
I can't imagine this. This would be like Chandler writing to Grammy to tell her about Melanie and Lizzy's death. How is it done?
Emily and her family were living in Arizona and Polly was in Ashley (now Vernal) Utah.
(Letter written by Daniel Philemon Jones to Polly Matilda (Merrill) Colton about the death of her daughter, Harriet Emily Colton Jones. Copied from the original, by Miriam Colton Perry, Jan 1, 1960. Original spelling & punctuation preserved.)
My Dear Grandma:
It becoms my painful! duty to write to you and send news that will be hard for you to bear . We have just got word from Tonto Basin by Wesley that they had an accident that took from us the one that gave me life, that is my mother and your daughter, and her baby Bertie. This is the hardest news that it would be possible for me to write to you for I realise that she was very dear to you as well as her children. And Little did she think that she was to go first, but it is so that she has gone, and we are left to mourn her loss and her little boy Bert who was allmost two years old. I have just wrote to sister Mary and sent her Pa’s letter, and told her to forward it to you so that you can see how he feels and his discription of the accident. It seems that they had built a shed in front of their tent and fastend the guy rope of the center of the tent to the shed, which they had been very careful! to make very stout and heavy, as they susposed. It had been raining for a week past and the continneous rain had made the ground very soft and the wet guy rope srunk untill it drew the shed over and ma was under it or part of her was, it seems that her head and one hand was out. She spoke once to Vina and once to Pa before she died. there was no help near to help Pa get the log of from her untill after she breathed her last. Pa says that it was over in a very short time. The baby was in Mas arms it never moved after the shed fell. It is a sad blow to Pa as he has no one to go to in his sorrow up there. Wiley, Ella, John, and I will start up there, as soon as the river gets so that we can cross which will be in a few days. We will send for Eddy to meet us there, I will write to you again when we return; which will be in about two weeks.
I want to tell you that it is all right with ma, she was as good and true a woman as ever lived on earth, true to her trusts as a wife, true to her faith and her God, and my prayer is that her brothers and sisters and her children, may so live we may all meet her and enjoy her society in the life to come some say that I am religeous like my ma, If so, I am glad of it, for I know that she has gone to meet her maker, and I certainly want to see her again with her three little children. I wish that all that are bound to her by the ties of kindness would think of her life, her faith in the Gosple of our savior, and shape there lives as hers was for it would be pleasant to think that some day we would all be reunited never to part again.
May God our heavenly father bless you and grandpa so that you may feel that it is his will not ours, for he must of (wanted?) Ma or he never would have taken her in the way that she was taken. give love to all, we are all well hoping this will find you the same I remain
yours D. P. Jones
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