The letter from Micajah to Spencer C. Rogers

Here is a more legible copy of the letter, which unfortunately is in sections. But they are in order!

First I'll turn it upside down so you don't have to, to read the pointed finger P.S. at the top. My comments as editor are in italics. There will be some duplication as I pulled the copies from the original digital image (which is on Ancestry.) Please leave comments if you find alternative interpretations to my transcription efforts!

(Is there a name for the pointing finger symbol?)

"I think our Sabbath School will shortly give you an order for Sabbath School Books. I wrote to you some months ago but I suppose it was lost on the way."

The the beginning of the letter itself: Upper right:

Huntsville, Texas

14 Feby. 1866

S. C. Rogers Esq.

    Dear Borther. - Your very welcome letter of the 28 (unclear) comes

to hand by mail this morning. I wa truly glad to hear from you

after the terrible war through which our country has passed, but

thought it a little strange that you said nothing about your (?)

family, and whether the yankees left you amy property to Sustain

yourself. I am anxious (?) to know if you stood your ground

through out the war and whether they treated you as a friend

or an enemy. I am also anxious to know Something about

my only living child, my Son Wm L. and how he's getting

along, and how he fared during the war. I learn that

unhappy times yet exist in old Tennessee, which state is

my mother state and will always be dear to me. M(---?) 

that many union men are S-?-ing Secepion(?) man for having 

damages for wrongs perpetuated during the war, and that

in the Eastern portion of the State many Southern men do not

yet think it Safe to return home; party remor runs So high.

These are sad things if so, and if Governor Brownbery (?) is

fomenting these things, as reported, and encouraging these

unhappy lawuits, he is not th eman he should be he

lacks that Soul he Should have. And if he has any desires

from the prosperity(added above -)of the state he Should pour the oil of kindness on

the troubled waters in place of fomenting Strife and contentions (?)

"By gones Should be by gone" - and peace and fraternity

should be cultivated. It is (?) (above-) to be hoped that the good of both

parties may take a wise counsel and do what they can

to quiet the peope and restore good feeling once more, for

100 years will not restore the South to the prosperity that

existed before the war. The deed is done and it is the

.

---(repeated copy from above)

utmost folly to discuss the questions now. All both

north and South, but especially the South will feel

the ruin spread over them for many long years to come.

Page 2

I was at first bitterly opposed to Secession, on the grounds that

although we felt oppression's hand b..? heavily, we had

better bear the ills we knew than fly to those we could not

see - better have contested and claimed our rights in the

Halls of Legislation, then to have seceded. We would not have

suffered by encroachment in 100 years which we lost in 4 short

years - Be it so - we fought- we lost the blood stained fields

and our a...? ones, if honest, must say they found pluck in

the south, while pluck was of any avail, but numbers will

triumph over the weak.  We gallantly acknowledged ..men?..

were overpowered, - dutch and Irih immigration was more

than we had bargained for. And had we been taken back

cheerfully and promptly into this Old Union the break

might have been s---?-- healed. But no, magnanimity is wanting.

They who feel conscious of having committed untold injuries

are shy of their former adversary and feel selfish in holding

them at arms length. They have freed the Black race, and with

but with few disgraceful exceptions, a lasting injury has been inf-

...inflicted on them. All who had kind and good masters, who

consulted the interest of their slaves felt conscious they were consu-

lting their own best interests. Now no one is interested in taking

care for them and they must suffer greatly. They in my humble

opinion, before the war, were increasing faster than any portion

of the population of the U. S. That showed they were cared for

and their wants supplied. They will now decrease, and

disappear from the South faster than ever did the Red

Men of the Forest before the American People

I am, however happy to say that the f. m. c. have quietly(?)

in our region, made contracts and gone to work, but but not(?)

with that vim as when they were Slaves, for much.

now takes the place of coercion. They will gradually

decline and become a very degraded people and the result

will be that but few will have any thing to do with them.,

and then comes the winter of their discomfiture. The Freedman's

Bureau is to haten this catastrophe. If they are free, why

not let them make their own contracts without the agency of

any one? Whats past would now me aloof from from contracting

.page 3

with a freed man I could not bear the idea of an Agent

coming along months after the service was rendered in

good faith and paid for in the same spirit, and say

to me "Sir you have not paid this man enough for his

Services, you must pay so much more per month to him

instantly or I will order the Seizure of your property to make

it." All this too, when they are moving heaven and earth

to make the negro a voter. Not able to contract without

the Sanction of an Officer of the Freeman's Bureau, but

quits Sufficiently enlightened to vote judiciously. O Shame 

where is thy blush? If the north can carry their points

the South is forever a doomed people. Let me drop this

dark picture. Perhaps I am too gloomy.

.

(Hand pointing) You name the idea of writing a memoir of our

revered father. I wish it could be properly done, but I do

not know how I can aid much, as I have nothing written

upon the subject and memory at the age of 70 is too frail

to enable me to say scarcely any thing that would be interesting.

I could begin with the name of my Grandfather Henry Rogers

and give the names of my uncles and aunts.  Then my G. father

Spencer Clack and give the names of uncles and aunts, but

to show how little attention I have paid to genealogy, I will

write an instance. A young friend of mine, after I was a

married man, and children around me, went a long journey

expressly to see and converse with an aged Grand Father

he had never seen. When he returned he told me he did not

regret his visit, that he had found his G.F. though very aged,

a man of strong mind, who gave him much information

.and the genealogy of the family correctly for 100 years back.

I said, that itself is worth your trip. I began to think on a

new subject. I found I knew nothing of my ancestry for I had

never made it a Subject of inquiry. Our people had left East

of the Blue Ridge in Va. at an early day - The Rogers family

From Farquier County and the Clack family from Loudoun

County and thus the two families were cut off from all their

connection and only became acquainted when the arrived

in a wild unsettled region which afterward proved to be part of

.

Page 4

what is now Sevier County, East Tennessee, where civilization

began to assume that Shape.  I Some how or other had

minded that my G. M.'s maiden name was Mary Beavers.

And (?) there I met impenetrable darkness. I turned to see what

I could make of my other G. M.'s name, but had to my surprise

never heard her maiden name on the paternal side of his

house. I laughed to my self in the presence of my young friend

and told him he was far ahead of me in genealogy. When

next I saw my father I told him of this incident. He said

my young friend was very far ahead of him in that particular

-that he had crossed the Allegany when quite a lad with his

parents and knew but very little of the connection he had left

behind. We both consoled ourselves that we lived in a happy

country where "Every test had to Stand upon its own bottom(?)"

that ancestry could not avail us much - that if ever we did any-

thing worth of making its "footprints on the sands of time,"

it would have to be without ancestral aid. He, however, was

able to say his mother's maiden name was Elizabeth Lankford, (Sankford?)

.

.

and that his knowledge of his name ended. He had people "to

that brown farm where no traveller returns." I should be

glad to aid you but you see my means for information.

shoud you publish a memoir of our father I would like

to take as many copies for distribution as my limited means

will allow, for you must know that when this war did come

I had no hesitancy in saying on which side I stood.  All my

little means, or (?) so, was (?) in the Southern cause

and at the close I found all my finances in (?) Confederate

Bonds. I do not regret it. I did must do my duty as I honestly

believed, - And although I desire peace and prosperity to our

unhappy country and wish to spend the remainder of my life

as a Loyal Citizen under the Same circumstances I would

do the same thing over again. My health is very good for a

person of my age. I live with Thomas Gibbs who has his second wife.

She was a Miss Mary Blake from Fayetteville N.C. She is a good

lady. Nanny's two interesting children have never know the loss of

their natural mother. Happy and fortunate children. She has 3 of her

own, bright little fellows - has had (fun?)

Write me (freely?) if you can find time

} Your brother, (in Christ?) very scratchy signature

}(M. C. Rogers) (someone else's handwriting)

I wish I knew the provenance of this letter. Who kept it all these years? If it was sent to Spencer, and he wasn't living with any of his family, how did it get back into the ancestry files for him? And where is the original, if it still exists?

I like the little hand pointing on page 3, which brings out that Spencer must have written to Micajah as it says "You mentioned..."

And it also mentions that he had contact with his father Rev. Elijah Rogers and conversed briefly about their ancestry, to little help except that Elijah remember his mother as Elizabeth Lankford. Since Elijah died in 1841 in Sevier County, I think that conversation was perhaps in Micajah's memory rather than within the time he received the proposal of a memoir from Spencer. 

Micajah lived until 1873 and Spencer till 1886. It wasn't until much later that a historian did some research on the "Sketches Of Tennessee's Pioneer Baptist Preachers"... including Rev. Elijah Rogers.