Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 5.djvu/205

Rh In September, 1814, he wrote that he expected to be at Bedford, N. H., the next summer, and in 1817, his friends at the West wrote to him, directing their letters to that town. He returned to Ohio in the spring of 1818, with the purpose, evidently, of disposing of his property there and coming back to New Hampshire to spend the remainder of his days. This purpose, however, was never fulfilled. From letters which passed between him and friends, we learn that his pecuniary circumstances were such that he was never able to do so.

A letter dated "Decatur, Washington County, Ohio, March 4, 1827," written to his brother David Patten at Bedford, says James died at Belpre the previous January of "old age and some fever," "after an illness of one week," and that his property would not amount to five dollars after his funeral expenses were paid.

Correspondence covering a period from 1788 to 1818, marks some of the changes which have taken place in our country since that time.

The financial results of Mr. Patten's life were not unlike that of the majority of pioneers of that day, but they laid foundations upon which others have built with abundant success.

Then it required about thirty days to make the journey from New Hampshire to Marietta, Ohio; now the same journey may be performed in fewer hours, to say nothing of the difference in fatigue and expense between horseback riding and traveling in palace cars.

In Marietta in 1801, wheat was worth " four and sixpence" per bushel; corn, two shillings per bushel; rye, three shillings; beef, by the hundred, eighteen shillings; pork, by the hundred, twenty-one shillings; and flour, by the barrel, thirty-six shillings. Considering the difference in the value of money those prices were very much higher than now.

The greatest change, however, seems to be in the mode of communication. When Mr. Patten and his company first went to Marietta, there was no Post Office there, nor at Bedford, N. H. At first, letters were sent by private conveyance. In one of his letters, Mr. Patten says he has not received a letter from his friends at Bedford for three years. When he wrote by mail, he directed his letters to Amherst, and in one case to Concord. In June, 1817, we find a letter from Mr. Patten written at Belpre, and directed to Bedford Post Office, and still after this his letters were directed to Amherst Post Office, until September, 1823, when they were directed to Bedford, and from that time onward. The letter of this last date was directed to "David Patten, Esq., Bedford, N. H.," "to the care of the post-master," mailed at Belpre, O., Sept. 2, and received at Bedford, Sept. 28, postage twenty-five cents. It was written on a very coarse sheet of foolscap, folded without envelope, and sealed with a red wafer.