John Milton Binckley to "My Dearly Beloved Aunt," March 21, 1865

[John Milton Binckley at Washington, D.C., to "My Dearly Beloved Aunt," at [n.p.], March 21, 1865. Paragraph breaks added for easier reading.

Many thanks to William Myers, Mary Davy, Sally Young and Sue Davis for their ongoing research collaboration; specifically to William for providing scans of the original document, and in turn many thanks to Peter Johnston Binckley and Patricia D'Arcy "Trish" Binckley (1951-2007), at the source.]

                                                                Washington DC
                                                                    21 March 1865
My Dearly Beloved Aunt,

How long it has been since I wrote to you I am afraid to recollect. I only know it has been too long, and though I confess that I do not think of you as often as I once did, for time brings such thousands of things & persons to drive older and better memories out of my head, yet when I do think of my dear old Aunty, it is with very warm love and with so much feeling that it always makes me long to go right to you. 

Believe me, I am still as fond of thinking of the days of my youth as if they had but yesterday passed away. Yet how long has been the time that now seems so short, since in 1844 and 1845 I used to be with you. It will, I think, be 21 years next harvest since that summer when I staid so long with you.

Oh what changes have been wrought in that time! The many places I have travelled, the people I have known, have hated, have forgiven, have loved, have forgotten! The many heartaches, the many dreams, the many disappointments, the many temptations -- alas, not always resisted!  

Yet you have changed but little. I know it. I could now go to you a man of thirty-four, with my wife and my two children, and with the sweet memory of the one that God took, and could forget it all and be, as I looked upon you, the same boy of fourteen that I was in the harvest of 1845.

I have seen much of the world, of fine cities, of rich & splendid folks, of bright and beautiful things, but ah! My dear mother's sister, I have seen nothing since my boyhood that I love so much as what I saw then. This world is all false, and the most of its splendor & finery is empty show that dries up the heart and starves the soul.

My family, including Mother, are down on the Eastern shores, where I have rented a plantation. I am here practicing law and have also been one of the Editors of the Daily Chronicle. I sent my family down there partly because my wife's health required her to be in the country & partly because [the cost of] living was so very high in the city and besides, I had a notion to take a trip to the Rocky Mountains, where brother George us -- that is, in the Pike's Peak country, now called Colorado. But I did not go.

In the fall, we will all be back in my own house in the city. I have a large garden with a right nice house in the midst, which, thanks be to God, is my own property. So with a comfortable home over my dear mother's head in her old age, I fear nothing. 

                                        God bless my dear Aunty
                                                          Milton  

[John Milton Binckley (circa 1831-1878).
Aunt = possibly Eva Catharina "Kitty" Stocker Croskey (1784-?).Mary Louisa Michel (1838-1930).  Children up to that time:  Ellen / Nellie / Nella (Fontaine) Binckley (1860-1951), Rosalie Binckley (1862-1864), Harvey Mitchell Binckley (1864-1928). 
Mother = Charlotte Stocker Binckley (1788-1877).
George Binckley (1828-1885)]