Letter, 13 January 1853, of J.B. Leak (of Laurens District, South Carolina), to his brother, Samuel Leak (in Coweta County, Georgia), gives news of the family, including the birth of children - “we are multiplying in fast terms there is 15 grand children in this Country,” and reports that their parents were beginning “to look very old and infirm.”

Leak reports having made plenty of corn the previous season but he had to buy a little meat. Corn was selling from forty to fifty cents per bushel. As to his views on moving, Leak had offered his land for sale but did not expect to move until the fall of the year, “if I can sell to advantag[e] I am fully Determined to move although I believe I could make more clear money for 2 years where I am than I could by moving and then sell my lan[d] for as much as I cou[l]d now.” While admitting “I want to move to some new place,” Leak asserted, “what fresh land I got is as good Land as I would get in a fresh country.”

Complaining that the cotton economy was ruining the country, Leak insisted that he wanted to relocate where he could plant corn, wheat, and oats and raise hogs, cows, colts, sheep, geese, and chickens “and live fat and all ways have some to spare.”

The “circuit preacher...old Henry Bass,” had preached recently, but in Leak’s opinion “I never seen the churches as luke warm before I believe a good deal of the fault lies in the ministry they don’t pay the attention they use to do and another thing Laurens Circuit has at present a bad stock of Class leaders.”