Letter from Peter Evans Force to Uncle Manning Force

Hokes Bluff , Alabama
Jan 17, 1886

My dear Uncle,

I was very glad to receive a package from you but on a count of bad weather I didn't get it until yesterday. I have read a great many pages in my cyclopedia such books are of a great interest to me now that I have learned the value of them. I have often regretted and always will that I didn't study harder when I had a chance to.

I thought I would like to be a farmer but when I left school and tried the farm I saw the differnce. I often wish now that I could have the chance that I once had to learn and I would try to make a man of myself. I spent a few weeks at Carthage last month. The first time I have been there since I came down here.

The place does not look like my recollection of it. The front porch is town down and the stables are stuck down in the front of the house which I think hurts the looks very much and I went up to my fathers library and there I saw his books all piled up every way on the shelves and pictures of him and his brothers adn classmates scattered around on the floor. I picked them up and laid them away. Aunt Sally said when they moved there the books were scattered aroudn everywhere and she pile them up on the shelves. I am going down there in about three or four weeks and I will straighten up the library.

Love to all

Your affectionate Nephew

Peter E. Force

Translation notes:

Peter Evans Force (1868-1930) is the author of this document. At this point, he has returned to live in Alabama near his mother and her 2nd husband, Peter's step father, Willam Martin. Aunt Sallie (Frierson Wiggins) is a sister to Peter's mother Katherine Ogie Frierson Force Martin. The Wiggins family rents the farm that Peter's father, Henry Clay Force, owned. Peter is describing his father's home.