Condolence letters re: death of Leland Stanford: Mer - Mu includes Justin S. Merrill, Nelson A. Miles, Frank Miller, and Adelaide Murphy

THE WESTERN UNION TELEGRAPH COMPANY RECEIVED at M C June 21 1893 Dated San Fran 21 To Mrs Stanford

Oh Mrs Stanford how my heart aches for you

Mary P Merchant

sit there and weep not being physically able to go and mingle my tears at his funeral. The doctor has ordered me to go to Redwood if I can secure the room I had last summer which has the sun all day. my cough almost strangles me. I had to economize on wood and coal past winter and took a violent cold added to failing

strength which clings to me. I shalt be at Prices Hotel probably the middle of next week if you should feel like speaking to me, dear kind friend whose words have always been such a comfort to me since the two boys wandered away from us to their heavenly home! May His arm on which

you lean with such confiding love support you in your speechless desolation

With love Mary P Merchant

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705 Stockton Street Saturday June 24th -93

Widowed! and childless! Truly God's ways are inscrutable. Nor do I pretend to be able to give you any comfort but only to tell you how constantly I have thought of you in this your crowning bereavement. To day "he is going to his long home, and mourners, go about the streets."

I can only

I have had the emblems of woe, so often at my door, that, I felt that it hath been truly said, "That one touch of sorrow, makes the whole world kin." I felt like writing you a letter, when you lost your idolized son, but there you had your husband to comfort and sustain you but, now, as your last-earthly prop has been taken, you can take the blessed promise of the Lord, that, he will never leave or forsake, you, and although he moves mysteriously, to us He is too wise to err, & too good to be unkind, and we have to bow, with submission to his will, as we are told in the Bible that He chastens those that

he loves. We know not why we are called on to suffer such deep & heart-rending afflictions in this world, but we will know here after when the secrets of the other world are known to us. Now my dear unknown friend let those blessed promises sustain you in all, your earthly trials untill the Master calls you to "Come up higher" there to meet your lived & lost, that have gone, before you, never more to be seperated, in that "Blessed Land" where sickness & Death are unknown, & where the wicked cease from troubling & the weary are at rest. Please pardon the liberty I have taken in addressing you, but as I myself, am a child of

affliction, it makes me feel more for others, than probably I would under other circumstances. Hoping you may find some comfort in these lines for your bleeding heart, and always bear in mind that earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal.

I will now close this letter by wishing you , when lifes trials & sorrows are over, a happy home in Heaven at last reunited with all your loved ones that have gone before, never more to part.

Very Respectfully Mrs Fannie A. Mettert 2229 Venable St Richmond Virginia

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Richmond Virginia July 3- 1893

Mrs Leland Stanford: Dear Madam:,

Feelings of the deepest sympathy, prompt, me to write you a letter of condolence.

You have been heavily stricken and, bereaved of both husband and only child, and my heart goes out to you, in deepest sympathy. No one on earth can measure the anguish of your heart, thus torn & lacerated by Deaths relentless hand, that neither spares from his icy touch the "Throne or the hovel.