Flynns Creek,
Gippsland,
Victoria,
15th Nov.,1881.
Dear Aunt,

You will see by this that poor mother has passed away. She died on the morning of the 1st of this month. She had been very feeble and helpless for nearly a year although suffering very little pain.
I went to see her about seven weeks before, she was very low and tremulous but her mind and even her sight was as strong nearly as ever and remained so to the last and I am happy to say considered herself quite prepared and even longing for the hour that it would please the Lord to call her. I stopped a few days and did not see her alive after.
I had promised to be at her funeral or when her last came if they could send me word in time, but owing to the delay in getting the telegram and the distance(155 miles) she was just buried when I arrived.
Dear Aunt, you will be wondering who is writing to you. Well it is your late and only sister's eldest son, and I am carrying mothers wish in doing so and my own wish also and would be very glad to keep up a correspondence with you or any of my cousins of your family.
As to general news and our family affairs, I wont trouble you now. No doubt mother has kept you informed of that but I know she has not been able to write herself for a long time past.
Dear Aunt, you too must be getting old(I am getting on in years myself) and perhaps this may never reach you. Whether or not I hope it will find some of yours who will write to me. My full address is at the beginning. I have got one of your letters dated December '79 and one from St Peter Minnesota dated May '80 signed Nancy Meyer. From these I got your address. I also gather that you have a large, kind and good family. That is the greatest blessing any parent can be possessed of.
I have written to Sarah Jane Boyd, Drumbannagher, also to Mrs.Sarah Tongley, Troy, so I think I have done pretty well. Until I hear from some of them I have yet to say.
My family is in very good health and all the families of my sisters and brothers so far as I know.
Our summer is just setting in, I have not seen any snow all last winter except on distant mountains.
Dear Aunt, it is a long time since I saw you and yet I think I remember you and some incidents that happened. How long is it since you went to America, and did you not go in the 'Tarbolten'?
I remember being at grandfather's, you were just married then and I would sleep with no one but Aunt Betty Ann. Uncle Robert pretended to be in a great passion and started off for the police. I could not have been very old then. I am 58 this month.
I will now draw this short epistle to a close, with love to all my cousins and their families and to yourself Dear Aunt and Uncle.