This is Rachel Hatton Estes, born in 1803. Her brother Thomas Hatton is our 4th great grandfather, Irvin “Junie” Hatton’s father. Junie is the father of Grandma Hendricks, Grandma Carroll’s grandmother.
Rachel was born in Clark County Kentucky and lived in Estil County where much of the Hendricks family settled. In a transcribed letter shared on Ancestry.com she encourages her friends back in the Kentucky hills to move to Kansas as she did as the land is flat, easy to navigate and cheap. She died in Straight Creek Kansas in 1891 at the age of 88. I thought the letter was interesting especially as we also have this great picture of her and so I wanted to share it with you.
Contributed to the Estill Co., KY Archives by:
Jen Bawden
Date: 06/13/1999
No punctuation or spelling changes have been made. Any
words in parenthesis are added by myself for clarification.
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July the 31th 1857
Dear friends,
I now take my pen in hand to inform you that I am well at the present and
I hope that those few lines will find you in Joying the same blessing and
now I will say to you hopeing and trusting that you will believe me and
now if you will take my advice you will come away from those oald worn
out hill Sides and rocky and mountainous country and come to a leavl
country where you can travel as fair as you wish to go in any direction
and you will not have to get off of your horse to walk down or up any
hill atall and now I will Say to you my dear friends that if you will come
hear to kansas territory that you can doo better than you can their and you
want have to work any more than half as hard as you do their and if you
want to come hear you had better come out as quick as you can for you can
get land a gradiel (great deal) cheaper now than you can after awhile for
their is a great many persons that have brought land that wants to sell and
now is the time to come and get land cheap in kansas and now I will say to
you that hear is the place for a laboring man to make money fast and now I
will say to you my dear friend that I would like to See you all at all times
and as i live a great many miles from you I want you to wright to me a letter
and when you wright to me direct your letters to atchison County atchison
Postoffice Kansas territory and now I will tell you where I live I live about
thirty miels from atchison post office I live in calhoon county in kansas
territory and about thirty miles from the river and now I will say to you
that the land is just as ritch as land can be but the timber is very scarce
here in this country and now I will say to you that any person will will
atall can live hear easier than they can their and now I will say to you that
I have got Some of the best land that kansas does efford and I only paid
one dollar and twenty five cents an acre and i live on Strait creek about
four miles from the mouth and the same distance from grasshopper creek and
their is a steem mill tere (there) and a town too and Some more at the
present time but remains your umble and obligeing friend
from Raches Estes to Dianer Hoover of Estill Co
At least some of her children however remained in the Kentucky Hills for another hundred years her children and grandchildren, documented as DNA relatives of mine, lived near the place she left, finally moving to Los Angeles California in the 20th century.
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