Page 5 Benj. Lafayette Smith’s letters, etc.
 
 February the 1st 1857
 
 Dear Cousin Martha (Warren)
  It has been a long time since I received your last letter.
 I will write a few lines in Fathers letter. This leaves us all in good health
 and hope that this will find you enjoying the same. I picked cotton yesterday
 morning and the evening before. I have picked two days and got 230 lbs. You
 must tell me how much you weigh when you write again. You recolect that you
 was two or three lbs head of me when you weighed last. I recon that I am a
 head of you now. I weigh 120 now. I expect that Cousin Mc has been looking
 for a letter from me a long time. When you see her you must (tell?) her that
 she must write to me first when she goes off to school, because I wont know
 where she will go to. If she is at your house and will stay there I will write
 to her. I would have written to her but I did not how where she was. Mr.
 Brothers is sick again and they are expecting him to die everyday. I reckon
  Cousin Bob is done teaching school. He said when he was down here that he
 would quit teaching by this time.
 From your affectionate Cousin.
 Lafayette
 ----------------------------------------
 
 
 February the 1st, 1857
 Dear Cousin Mc (Warren)
 I received your letter an the 20th of January. I was very
 glad indeed to receive it.
 This leaves us all in tolerable goad health and hope it will find you enjoy-
 ing the same. Now I will tell you all of our ages. I will be l5 years on
 the, 11th of next October. Roger Sherman 13 the 18th of next April. William
 Penn 12 the 23rd of next October. Elbridge Gerry(sp?) 7 the 23 of next dec-
 ember. Robert Emmet 5 the 15th of this month. Nancy Emily 4 the 25th of
 next September. Charles Caroll Rush 2 the 9th of next June. The baby one
 month old the 7th of this month. I named him Buster for a nick name. When
 you write again you must tell me a good name for him.
 Nov cousin I have told you all of our ages, now you must tell me your age, will
 you? I told you in my other letter that Sherman said he would write to you
 and not Penn, but, he says now that he will write to you if you will write.
 Charley can most whip Sissy. They bad a big fight this morning.
 I did not think that Miss Sue Books could marry well according to the way
 Cousin talked about her. She and Cousin did not get along well together
 at all did they? How did you and she get along together Cousin Mack?
 We will start to school tomorrow if Mr. Turnipseed has got back from Tusca-
 loosa. We went to school to him 8 months last year.
 I received a letter from Cousin Priss at the same time I received yours. It
  was a very short one. Every time she writes she says that she will write me
 a long one next time, and she has never writen me a long one yet and I do not
 expect she ever will write me another long one.
 You asked me the name of Father’s ward in Florence. His name is Henry Belton.
 I went to school with him about 8 months. He is a wright clever young man.
 Pa has another ward going to school in Columbus, Miss. There has been two
 weeks of the worst weather that I ever saw I believe. One, it was raining all
 the time and the other it was snowing all the time. We have bad two pretty
 days since. There has been a great many wild geese and pigeons here this
 winter. I have not shot at the pigeons but two or three and I killed three
 at a shoot one time. I shot at the geese one time and killed one. I can
 not come up with Henry Belton’s Brother yet He killed 15 pigeons at a shoot.