[Undated, probably 1839 or 1840]

To Mrs Polly B White,¹ Bourbon Co., Ky.²

My Very Dear Aunt,

I promised to write to you the first opportunity. Uncle Reuben's³ starting up much sooner than I expected will necess arily make my letter much shorter than I intended or wish, for I would like to have you solve many doubts and queries that have arisen in my mind since I have been afflicted. . . . I must now tell you something about my health. I think my limbs are a little stronger than when you left. Have been rubbing them as you prescribed and think it of some benefit. I still can't walk. My health in any other respect is no better. My whole nervous system seems to be shattered. The rest are all well. Statira⁴ and I had a long talk about you the day you left. She said she never had such a desire to talk to any body in her life. She thinks the baptists have no confidence in her because she first joined the reformers.⁵

You must excuse this letter. I am writing on a pillow, and my nerves are so weak I have been obliged to rest several times. I want you to write me a long letter by Uncle Reuben. If you knew how many cries I have had about you since you left, you would certainly write a very long letter. Give my love to Elizabeth,⁶ and Louisa⁷ and the children, also to Aunt Nancy⁸ and family.

And may the Lord bless you, both temporally and spiritually, is the sincere desire of your affectionate, Niece Mary B Bristow

At Aunt Nancy's,⁹ Saturday Morning

/Written in 1841/

My Dear Brother and Sister,¹⁰

I have intended to write to you for some time, but could never get pen, ink, and paper at the same house until now. We received your letter and have heard from you several times by persons coming up. We heard you had some sickness in the family and I think if the Lord would give me a grateful heart I would be sincerely thankful when I hear that you are all well again, for I am just as uneasy and restless about you at times as if I did not recollect that the same omnipotent hand did reign in the armies of heaven and amongst the inhabitants of earth. . . .

I have visited the home of our birth,¹¹ the graves of our brothers and sisters. Our home is almost in ruins, yet it is still in my eyes the loveliest spot on the face of the earth, but it caused deeply painful emotions to revisit it, as you may suppose. Not a spot but brought to my mind the pleasures & sorrows of byegone years. The graves¹² of our loved ones are completely protected from the foot of unhallowed intrusion by the [shrubs?] planted there by my own and the hands of our dear Sister Sally,¹³ whose mortal form sleeps under their shade. The stout locust railing is nearly decayed.

Mother seems fearful that R & A¹⁴ will let the prophecy about the meeting house come true, but I hope they will not. She says if any of the family get sick, you must send for us immediately. Uncle Reuben does not talk like coming home for several weeks yet. His health is so much improved and he seems to enjoy himself so much better here with his old friends than he does in Boone,¹⁵ and as land has fallen so much here, I should not be surprised if he never lives in our county again.

I must come to a close and get ready to start to old Stony Point¹⁶ to meeting. Oh, my Brother, how often have we started there in younger and happier days accompanied by those whose dear faces we shall see no more in time. . . . May the Lord bless and be with you is the prayer of your unworthy sister,

Mary B Bristow.

[The following letters are among those Mary wrote to Mrs Hannah Williamson, a fellow Baptist living in Ohio, not otherwise identified.]

At Home, Dec 15th 1844

My Dear sister,¹⁷

With feelings of real pleasure I received your truly interesting letter by Br Williams.¹⁸   And since that time have written more than a dozen answers, not with pen, ink, and paper, but with my eyes shut. The first week after I received yours I was engaged in going to meeting and attending on my sister,¹⁹ the one you saw and the only one I have, who has been complaining for several weeks but is now in a fair way to recover. Last week I was confined to my bed by a severe attack of bilious vomiting, and now there is a tumour²⁰ forming on my ankle that causes me acute suffering. And not being blest with the patience of Job, I am as restless and as unhappy a mortal as you would wish to see. . . .

Sunday Morning At Home, April 25, 1845.

My Dear Sister,

With feelings of joy I received your welcome letter by Brother Lassing,²¹ and will you believe it, the first thing I done was to burst out in a hearty fit of laughter. I suppose you thought I was out of wafers and was under the necessity of pinning my letter.²² You would tie yours as good luck as any. [sic] One thing is certain: we have confidence in our mail carriers, and have nothing of a treasonable character to write or we would be more cautious.

I should have answered your kind and interesting letter sooner but for the state of my health; never good at any time, [it] is worse this spring than common. I have scarcely had strength of mind or body to attempt writing for some time past. My Mother has been complaining a good deal and I have been anxious about her. You, my dear friend, who have been always blest with good constitution, cannot know the distressing feelings the dreadful phantoms conjured up by a poor nervous wretch like me. I am perfectly conscious they can only be known by experience, and my sincere wish for you my Sister is that you may never be able to feel for me. We may think we feel for our friends when we see them in distress or afflicted circumstances, but I think I know from actual experience that we cannot indeed and in truth sympathize with our friends unless we have been similarly circumstanced. . . .

Sunday Evening At Home, Dec 9th 1845.

My Dear Sister,

. . . My Uncle²³ who was at your house last spring has been to all appearance near unto death. [He] is now better. His wife is from home, and Mother & my self have been with him nearly all the time.

At Home, March 1846.

My Dear Sister,

You have probably come to the conclusion that I have put my projected trip to Oregon²⁴ in execution, or (as I thought [of you] before the reception of your last) have been sick, or anything rather than harbor hard thoughts of me. I made fifty excuses for you before your last came to hand, but when I got it I was bound to admit it came at the right time, when I needed a drop of comfort. My Mother has been confined to her room and mostly to her bed for two months. Was very violently attacked with Erysipelas²⁵ and has had two relapses. She is now able to walk about her room, and I hope in a fair way to recover. Death has also been amongst us and has taken a very dear aunt.²⁶ But we grieved not, as for those with no hope, confidently believing she sleeps in Jesus. . . .

At Home, May 20th 1847

My dear Sister,

. . . I have been engaged at the same distressing business that you had before you wrote, watching the sick and dying. Have been five weeks from home with my Brother, the one you know.²⁷ His wife and son were both complaining when I got there. (She has a son three weeks old.)²⁸ His son gradually grew worse for two weeks and then was taken violently bad with congestion of the brain, suffered as much for two weeks longer as I ever witnessed. Some days before his death became perfectly quiet and left the world so calmly that we could scarce tell when he was gone.²⁹ . . .

My brother and sister are greatly afflicted. Hers was a most pitiable case; indeed she could hear the groans and screams of her darling boy when he spasmed and could neither get to him nor from him. She says the Lord had loaned her a precious jewel that she was unworthy to keep, and if it had not been for the support she received from the often recurrence of this text of the Scriptures, "Suffer the little children to come unto me, &c,"³⁰ she could not have lived. Oh, that the Lord may sanctify this deep affliction to them and enable them to say, "It was good to be afflicted."

[From the period of the Mexican War comes this doleful, patriotic quatrain.]

O'er the burning sands of Mexico
Thy weary feet hath trod,
But now thy gallant form lies low
Beneath thy native sod.
      — MBB

Sunday Morning, At Home, May 21st 1848.

My Dear Friend,

. . . You say you are not acquainted with Free Masonry. I don't suppose you are, but you probably know as much about it as some of its most violent oppressors. Some intelligent persons put Masonry on a par with all of those new-made religious institutions falsely labeled benevolent, but this is certainly an erroneous idea. I have been informed by some of the most intelligent of the order that they trace their origin back to the rebuilding of the Temple under Nehemiah.³¹ It is therefore proven to be an ancient order. And if any man or woman will point to the place where the Masonic institutions have ever pointed one finger towards meddling either with the politics of their country or any religious denomination more than any other citizen, I will agree that I have been deceived in this matter all my life. For, my Friend, I was born and raised with Free Masons and probably know as much about them as any person who has not been one of them. All my Brothers have been Masons, have spent their time and money lavishly in the pursuit of Masonic knowledge.³²

And right here, my friend, I will tell you of an error you appear to me to be in in regard to this matter. You say you are told that there is nothing binding a member of the Baptist Church to remain a member of the Lodge. I know of no Baptist upon earth who is a member of the Lodge, but every one I know, and I am acquainted with many (save one), some old men who have been baptists for thirty years, have never been inside a Lodge since they were baptized, tell me they would feel solemnly bound to attend if summoned. This is all that any Baptist has asked. I have heard them tell the church again and again they had no wish to ever to enter a Lodge, nor never would, unless they were summoned, but if they were, they were had to their own hurt [sic] and dared not change. And, my dear friend, let me ask you to get your Bible and read the ninth Chap. of Joshua and see how by lying and fraud the Gibionites caused the Israelites to swear to them, and then turn to the twenty-second Chap. of Second Samuel and see how the Lord punished the Israelites for breaking that oath, and ask yourself the question, whether you would be willing to take any man's conscience into your keeping and say, "You must not do this thing," when they feel solemnly bound to do it, that is, attend a Lodge on summons. For I am just as much opposed to baptists becoming a member of a Lodge or joining in their processions as any one and would hold up their hand for exclusion as soon.

I say all save one Mason of my acquaintance acknowledges their obligation. This is E. Stephens,³³ whom you know. I have heard him say at least a half dozen times he was under no obligation, would not attend under any circumstances, but when taken to task by the Lodge to which had formerly belonged, he writes this kind of thing: To the Brethren and members of Good Faith Lodge No 95. This is to certify you most sincerely that I will attend all signs and summons from this or any other Lodge (Mark this, my friend) when it does not conflict with my religious duties. E. Stephens. This is the creep hole, when it does not conflict with my religious duties. I leave it to your good sense, Cousin Hannah, to determine who has promised the most, those who have been excluded for saying they were bound, or E. Stephens, who has been held up as a model Baptist and said positively he was not bound. However, a majority of Sardis Church say I will and I won't means the same thing.

I would like to write you the whole circumstances of our exclusion, the little frivolous charges brought against us, but I haven't room now. I have not yet, Cousin Hannah, become entirely reconciled to your not coming home with me from the Association,³⁴ as I had all the acts of the Church, speeches on both sides written down for your inspection and judgment, and some extracts from sermons, too, that I very much wished your opinion on. However, this too was ordered by an Almighty hand and will ultimately end in good to me, if I am one of those for whom the Savior lived and died. . . .

My Mother bids me tell you that though she and all of her children have been excluded from the baptist Church, yet she still trusts in the same God; her hope of eternal life and immortal Glory is still fixed in the same Glorious redeemer that it was when she joined the Church twenty-eight years ago. She seems to have but few fears she that He who has supported her through trials that have seldom fallen to a lot of mortality will forsake her now when she is old and grey-headed.

Friend Hannah, the Eternal God is our refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms. May this God be thy helper in life and in death is the sincere wish of thy Friend, Mary B Bristow.

[The source of Mary's ire is explained in the following passages which she quotes from a transcript of the minutes of a special "committee of helps"³⁵ sent by other churches of the Licking Baptist Association, 28 and 29 July 1848. The membership of Sardis was badly split on the question of the propriety of Baptists being active Masons.]

"Two charges against Brother A E Clarkson³⁶ for being in disorder in violation to the Scriptures and the order of the Church, (to wit) 1st for saying he could not hold up his hand to exclude a baptist for visiting a Mason lodge on summons to give testimony which is contrary to order. 2d For saying that he believed there had been more sin committed in Sardis Church in eight months than had been in a Mason lodge, when convened as a lodge, for forty years.

"Charge against Bro. Anselm Bristow³⁷ for saying that before he would be perjured, as he would be by not attending a Mason lodge on summons, that he would see the church torn to pieces, which is contrary to the Order of the Church.

"Charge against Bro E T Clarkson³⁸ for saying that we tell you that we are bound to go to the lodge and we tell you we will go, which is contrary to the Order of the Church. 2d for requiring an acknowledgment from Bro Hume³⁹ that was not due the Church.

"Agree to exhibit a charge against Bro J T Wilson, Bro T J Wilson,⁴⁰ Sister Jane Bristow, Sister Mary Bristow for saying they are opposed to the order of the church which reads as follows (to wit): Agree to take up the subject on record from our last meeting after which the question was put, and the Church unanimously agreed it is wrong for baptist[s] to visit Mason lodges under any circumstances." (Signed B W Fowler)⁴¹

Additional transcript. "Charge against Bro E T Clarkson for saying that we tell you that we are bound to go to a lodge and we tell you we will go which is contrary to the Order of the Church. And for requiring an acknowledgment from Bro Hume that was not due the Church.

"Charge against any and every baptist in Sardis who shall or may appear in opposition to the Scriptures and the Order of the Church, which is and ever will be sustained by the solemn commands of the God we profess to worship."

Resolved unanimously in the opinion of this Committee that the actions of the majority of Sardis Church against the Minority (As set forth on their record) which is made part of this record, as well as from information received from other sources, is contrary to Gospel Order.

James Dudley,⁴² Modr.
H. Rankins,⁴³ Clerk.

 

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Notes:

[Click on footnote number to return to text.]

¹ Polly B. Clarkson, a younger sister of Mary's mother. She was born about 1792 and married William White in Bourbon County, 2 Jan 1809. She was widowed in May 1817 with four small children, two of whom later married their Dickerson cousins.

² Bourbon County lies in the Inner Bluegrass region of Kentucky, east of Lexington. The original settlers were mostly Virginians, and they may have (temporarily) exhausted the land's fertility by concentrating overmuch on raising their traditional cash crop, tobacco. Mary's grandfather, Julius Clarkson (1749-1831) was cited as one of the earliest tobacco planters in Bourbon. (See W. H. Perrin, History of Bourbon, Scott, Harrison and Nicholas Counties, Kentucky, 138.) Most of the Clarksons and many of their neighbors moved away from Bourbon County in the late 1820s and early 1830s, about four decades after they had settled there.

³ Reuben Lewis Clarkson (1779?-1849), who had married Polly Jones Clarkson (possibly a cousin) in Bourbon County, 25 June 1800. They had moved to Boone County by 1830.

⁴ Statira Bonaparte Stephens (1817-1902), daughter of Gen Leonard Stephens (1791-1873) and Catherine Sanford (1793-1843). She had married Mary's bother, Reuben Lewis Bristow (1811-1871) in Campbell County, 17 Jul 1834. They and their children were important figures in Mary's Record and her life.

⁵ The name given followers of Thomas and Alexander Campbell, who were strongly opposed to many of the tenets of the Baptists. (See below, A Relation of My Experience.)

⁶ Aunt Polly's daughter, Elizabeth Ann White (born about 1812), who had married 3 May 1830 in Bourbon County, Andrew T. Scott (born about 1805). By 1850 they had moved to nearby Fayette County.

⁷ Another daughter, Louisa Jane White (born about 1815), who had married 3 Mar 1833 in Bourbon County her cousin, Julius Lunsford Dickerson (1810-1875?). She had died by 1860.

⁸ Nancy P. Clarkson (1785?-1842), widow of John Dickerson (abt 1785-1822), whom she had married, 22 Jan 1807, in Bourbon County. Several of her children are prominent in Mary's writings.

⁹ Nancy Clarkson Dickerson, above.

¹⁰ Reuben and Statira, above. At this time they were still living in Boone County.

¹¹ The James Bristow family had lived until 1831 in southwestern Bourbon County, near Clintonville, on the watershed of Green Creek and Wolf Creek, surrounded by their Clarkson kin. Mary's father established one of the first mills in the district, which operated until about 1850. (Perrin, History of Bourbon, 138.) Green Creek wanders easterly through gently rolling terrain to a junction with Stoners Creek, a branch of the Licking River, but the location of Wolf Creek has faded from both community memory and official records. My efforts to pinoint the location were made more difficult because modern property documents (plats and the like) have never been related to the original grants and deeds. Some time later I found the mysterious Wolf Creek on an 1818 Map by Luke Munsell on display in the Old Capitol Museum in Frankfort.

¹² The family burying ground is one of many now lost. However, the graves of Mary's uncle, John Bristow (1776-1840), and his wife, Sarah Glover (1778-1831), were noted in the mid-twentieth century along with some others (not identified) just south of the Bourbon-Clark County line on the Canewood Clay farm, on the Paris-Winchester Pike. The graves and markers were in a state of advanced decay. The site is only a few miles from Clintonville and might have been the place mentioned by Mary. (See Kathryn Owen, Old Graveyards of Clark County, Kentucky, 10.)

¹³ Sarah Clopton Bristow (1801?-1829), Mary's next eldest sister. She married Thomas Roberts Benning, a journalist, 17 Jan 1828 in Bourbon County. (See below, 18 Nov 1858, for their sad story.)

¹⁴ Probably Mary's brothers Reuben and Anselm, but possibly her uncles for whom they were named. I have found nothing further about the intriguing prophecy.

¹⁵ Boone County, sometimes considered part of the Outer Bluegrass, overlooks the Ohio River at the northernmost point of Kentucky. The terrain is more varied than that of Bourbon or Fayette in the Inner Bluegrass. Many Boone residents had moved there from Bourbon. Boone and its neighbors, Kenton and Campbell Counties, are now within the Cincinnati metropolitan area.

¹⁶ Stony Point Baptist Church was named after its original location, but soon moved to the Middletown and Frankfort Crossroads, about 7 miles south of Paris and 5 miles east of Clintonville. The original log structure, which was built by Mary's father, James Bristow, survived into the 1880s, "slightly improved by an outside dress of clapboards." (Perrin, History of Bourbon, 139.) It has since vanished, and only rolling, green pastures can be seen.

¹⁷ Sister is a courtesy title, referring to their spiritual sisterhood as faithful Baptists. In a similar fashion, Mary later addresses her as "Cousin Hannah," but I know of no kinship.

¹⁸ Not identified.

¹⁹ Statira, her sister-in-law. Her own sisters were dead.

²⁰ Possibly due to erysipelas.

²¹ Morris Lassing (1800-1867) was a prosperous farmer who served as pastor of the Sardis Baptist Church in Union from 1854 until 1867. Unlike most of Mary's co-religionists, who were of British stock, he had emigrated from Catholic Bavaria in 1824. He lived about a mile south of Union, near the church.

²² Ready-made postal envelopes with sealable flaps were not yet in wide use. Letters were folded up and sealed with an adhesive sticker, or the proverbial sealing wax, or pinned. Mary was probably pleased that postal rates had been reduced in March to 5 cents to transport a letter of up to a half-ounce for a distance of 300 miles. Gerald Cullinan, The United States Postal Service, 67. As seen in this and other letters it was sometimes more convenient (or more secure) to entrust correspondence to a friend or family member who happened to be traveling in the right direction.

²³ Probably one of her Clarkson uncles, maybe Manoah, who was to die in 1847, or Reuben, who died a year later.

²⁴ Although Mary had some distant Bristow cousins who had gone to the newly-opened Oregon Country, as far as we know she never ventured much farther from Kentucky than just across the Ohio River to Cincinnati.

²⁵ Sometimes called Saint Anthony's Fire, erysipelas is caused by an infection of a variety of Streptococcus bacteria, and can follow strep throat or scarlet fever. Deep red, swollen, raised lesions occur in patches over the skin. Complications can include septicemia (blood poisoning), which is usually fatal. Several family members were afflicted.

²⁶ Her uncle Anselm Clarkson's wife, Mary Elizabeth "Polly" Trabue Clarkson (1787-1846), who had died on the 4th of March. She was the daughter of Edward and Polly Haskins Trabue. (For information on the Trabues, see Charles C. Trabue IV and Julie Trabue Yates, The Trabue Family in America.)

²⁷ Reuben Louis Bristow.

²⁸ Benjamin Franklin Bristow, born 20th of April, was named for his uncle who had died in the cholera epidemics of the 1830s. (See below, 12 Mar 1862.) The nephew, known by all as Ben Frank, lived until 1927 and married (successively) two sisters: first Eugenia Williams (1854-1889), and then her younger sister Stella Jane (1864-1927).

²⁹ The dying nephew was Leonard Stephens Bristow, who died 2 May 1847, just two days short of his ninth birthday. He was named for Statira's father.

³⁰ Mark 10:14.

³¹ Nehemiah served as governor of Jerusalem under the Persian Great King Artaxerxes in the mid-fifth century BC (445-433). Nehemiah 1:1 - 7:73 recounts of his rebuilding of the walls of the city. Nothing is said of his rebuilding the Temple.

³² Mary's elder brother, Julius Clarkson Bristow (1799-1865), and some of their Clarkson uncles were founding members of the DeWitt Clinton Lodge, from which the village of Clintonville later took its name. (Perrin, History of Bourbon, 138.) The Bristows have continued their affiliation with Freemasonry well into the twentieth century. Although many of the leaders of the Revolution, most notably George Washington, were Masons, there was a certain amount of popular suspicion of secret societies as undemocratic old-boy networks, which flared up in the 1830s as the Anti-Masonic Party. (See Morris, 170-171.)

³³ Edmund Stephens (1810?- ?) was a Baptist minister and farmer who lived near Burlington, the Boone County seat, a few miles west of Union. He had a son named Napoleon (as did Statira's father Leonard). But he is not to be confused with Statira's uncle Edmund Waller Stephens (1777-1864), or his son Ezekiel Pickens Stephens (1819-1899). As far as I know, the families are perhaps distant kin.

³⁴ Individual Baptist Churches were loosely joined into regional association with other congregations which shared compatible doctrines. Their periodic camp meetings, which were usually held in late summer following harvest, were scenes of great religious and social activity, which could last for days or even weeks. (See below, letter, Nov 1850.)

³⁵ Among the members of the committee sent by other churches in the Licking Association to resolve the controversy in Sardis Church was Edmund Hockaday Parrish (1805-1876), who had been married to two of Mary's cousins. Edmund's first wife was Mildred S. Clarkson (1806?-1833?), daughter of Mary's uncle Reuben. His second wife was Virginia Bristow (1809?-1849?), daughter of Mary's uncle Archibald and sister of Caroline (Bristow) Ashburn. His third spouse was the widow Eliza Mills (1808-1894), who as far as I can tell was no kin to Mary.

³⁶ Anselm E. Clarkson (1788?-1863), one of her mother's younger brothers. He was a frequent visitor.

³⁷ Anselm Wadkin Bristow (1816-1905), named for his uncle, Anselm Clarkson. He did not marry until his mid-forties, and his big sister never got out of the habit of thinking of him as her baby brother. (Fifty-seven years after this furor he was buried with Masonic rites, according to The Kentucky Post of 7 Oct 1905.)

³⁸ Edward Trabue Clarkson (1807-1872). The eldest son of Anselm and Polly Trabue Clarkson.

³⁹ William Hume (1786-1849). He was the son of another Baptist minister from Virginia, George Hume. Uncle Billy Hume was the pastor of five churches near the Boone-Kenton line: Crews Creek, Bank Lick, Dry Creek, Sardis, and Mount Pleasant. He died of cholera three days after he had "preached the funeral sermon of one who had died of the dread disease." (See W. H. Perrin, et al., History of Kentucky (Edition 7), 823-824.)

⁴⁰ Thornton J. Wilson (1790-1854), a neighbor of the Bristows, had a daughter, Martha Jane, who later married Anselm Bristow. (See below, 28 Oct 1860.) Martha had an elder brother, J. T. Wilson, who took up medicine and settled in Quincy, Illinois.

⁴¹ Not identified.

⁴² The third son (1777-1870) of Ambrose Dudley, who had founded the Licking Association and served as its first Moderator. A brother of Thomas Parker Dudley. (See below, A Relation of My Experience.)

⁴³ Not otherwise identified.

 

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