Ben C. Knight Letter

Title

Ben C. Knight Letter

Accession Number

2024.16.2.184

Accession Date

4 November 2025

Accession Creator

Meadow Knapp

Description

Letter from Ben C. Knight to Bertha Wilson, typed on the front and handwritten on the back

Contributor

Ben C. Knight

Date

April 13, 1908

Storage Location

Box 28, Folder #4

Text

Front: Enfield, N.C.,
My Dear, Good Friend:
I am more grateful than I can tell for your kind remembrance, and send many thanks for your tender heart's sympathy. I wish I could speak of the bright side of life, but I get discouraged and disheartened, especially since the death of my mother in October, 1901. I feel as if life will never be the same to me again.
I live on a small farm of about twenty acres, six miles from Enfield, Halifax County, N.C. We are off from the public county road, and surrounded by woods. I see but few people and hear but little of interest. I never was at a Christmas tree and but few places of entertainment. I never went to school but a few weeks, and never wrote a line under a teacher. I am 54 years old and have been afflicted 39 years with rheumatism, caused by exposure in cold winters and other troubles. I can't walk a step, or stand or straighten up, and can do no work at all. I am drawn in a sitting posture, can sit upon a chair and use my hands only slightly. I have weak arms and back, a stiff neck, and bad shoulder joints. I cannot get my hands up to my head. I suffer constant pains in the neck, hands and soulders, caused chiefly by weakness. My stomach is weak and I have lost my teeth, which makes it difficult to eat hard food. As we are not able to keep a cow I am denied milk as well as other needful articles of nourishment.
I am of a sickly family. The brother I am living with has been afflicted all his life with chronic heachache, neuraligia and rheumatism, and with la grippe nearly every winter for many years. With his three girls to work the little crop, after all debts for food, clothes and fertilizers are paid, there is but very little left for a hard working farmer. Yet how thankful all ought to be and never complain while able to work. I am grateful to the Heavenly Father for what I have, as I can sit up and write to my friends, and see and hear and talk with them when they come to see me. I try to collect old and rare coins and stamps, and sell my picture for ten cents. I am also trying to get up a book of many valuable recipes of all kinds, but all seem to be failures which make life more dark to me. My correspondence is chief pastime, but I need stamps and other things to help along.
I cannot charge the Lord with this disease as I believe so much is brought upon us by other means. I am thankful to be able to sit up, to get out in the sunshine and shade, and see the green leaves and nature as it grows and withers away. I do hope and pray as best I know, when this poor body is laid away the good Lord will send his trusty angels to take me safely home.
I wish each and every one every joy life and health, and thank you for your tender love and mercy, and kindly ask you to be my friend.
Your afflicted brother, "I. H. N.,"
Ben C. Knight
Back: April 13, 08
My Dear Remembered friend Miss Bertha Wilson I am no glad to bet your King better + 10 ¢ + Will send [illegible] poor little [illegible] Tune it is life I am yet No have as Tongue loan Toll, The Lisery of My Life [illegible] + Mind it summer like No sunshine in Life for me in this Life I Can see so for Before Time Came, To Bring it. I Cant write a long letter This Time but Hope you will Come again [illegible] + Tell me of your Home + Time work + Country + [illegible] + ¢ My letter is My Pass I am your lowely hearted
Ben C Knight