Correspondence (incoming): begging letters, H

Greensbro, Ala March 12th, [190?] Hons. Leland J. Stanford, Addressed:

I take the liberty of writeing to you in an humble way and if it be considered by you--placed so high in life above all distressing needs--I will have gained only your small loss.

My mother and I are poor. We have a little cottage, but I am out of employment and many misfortunes have been ours. It is yours to bestow and I can only make the request.

With a few hundred dollars to walk in and place in her dear old hands then enough to get her two or three nice cows which would be so proud a gift to surprise her with, -- can come we hope by the gracious stroke of your pen.

I see it so beautifully written in a publication of an extract from one of your letters that, "Our lives are not our own, and that when sorrows come we call it affliction." Yet how lovely and how touching is your hopes described at meeting your departed ones, and it is this that leads me to hope you may help poor mother and I.

Trusting this may meet with your approval I respectfully and tenderly enclose a few violets from out our cottage yard.

Most Respectfully,

Milford B. [Harriss?]

P. O. Box 218 Mexico Mo

Mrs. Leland Stanford Sacramento Cal.

Feb 11-1901

Kind Lady Among the numerous good things you have done can you help a private person who having paid all debts, finds himself nearly 60 years old and only a dark future before him. If I could only get some little assistance with what I could find to do I would be able to live and Praise God which I will do anyhow. Please forgive the above but it is hard to be poor having seen better days.

Yours very truly J. J. Hallows

Elizabeth Sept [?] 1893

Hon Mrs Leeland Stanford Dear Madam & Cousin

Pardon us for writing you again so soon but Circumstances oblige us to seek relief or assis tance from some source and therefore write you again to ask if you will not kindly help a amnt us to the amount of $800 to enable us too work out of our present financial troubles. If you will kindly do this much for us, you will confer a very Great favor and Relieve us from a Load of Anxiety and Care which is so

depressing Especially at our age

Hopeing you will Consider with favor our Request from your Husbands Relative and friend we Remain

Yours Very Truly [Thomas? ] Harris