“I am very glad to learn from your letter that you intend to accept Thomas’ invitation to go on his next voyage. I think it affords a fair prospect of being a permanent benefit to your health, and it will afford me the greatest pleasure to do anything in my power to aid your preparation, and make the voyage most agreeable and beneficial to you.
“The prospect of your early departure renders it proper and necessary to bring to a definite conclusion the subject we have had a considerable time under consideration, a settlement of the matter of the Pittsfield estate, with a view to which you handed me your deeds, when I was in Pittsfield last autumn.
“You will recollect that when you proposed to purchase a house in N. York I advanced to you $2000. and afterwards, when you purchased the Brewster place, I again advanced you $3000. For these sums, as well as for another loan of $500. afterwards, I took your notes. This I did, not because I had then any fixed determination to treat the advances as debts, to be certainly repaid, but I was in doubt at the time in reference to other claims upon me, and how my affairs would be ultimately arranged, what I should be able to do by way of provision for my daughter, and I put these advances upon the footing of loans until some future adjustment.
“I always supposed that you considered the two first of the above-named advances as having substantially gone into the purchase of the Brewster farm, and that I had some equitable claim upon it as security. I presume it was upon that ground that you once sent me a mortgage of the estate prepared by your brother Allan. I never put that mortgage on record nor made any use of it; and if the conveyances are made, which I now propose, that mortgage will become superseded and utterly nugatory.
“What I now propose is to give up to you the above mentioned notes in full consideration of your conveyance to me of your present homestead, being all the Brewster purchase except what you sold to Mr. Willis. This being done and the estate vested in me, I propose to execute a deed conveying the same in fee to Elizabeth. This will vest the fee as an estate of inheritance in her, subject of course to your rights as her husband during your life. If you wish to know more particularly what will be the legal effect and operation of these conveyances Mr. Colt will explain it to you fully. I have written to him and enclosed him a draft of a deed for you to execute to me and my deed executed to be delivered to you and your notes to be surrendered. I have explained the whole matter to Mr. Colt and I have full confidence in his prudence and fidelity. I do not see any advantage in giving the business any more notoriety than will arise from putting the deeds on record.
“Elizabeth now writes me that you wish the note for $600., given by the town and coming from the sale of the Brewster place, that part of it not sold to Mr. Willis, so placed that it may be applied as you have heretofore, in your own mind, appropriated it, for building a new barn.
“I propose to treat this as I did the estate itself: first purchase it of you for a full consideration and then apply it to Elizabeth’s use. In looking for a consideration for this purchase there is the interest of the above notes not computed in the consideration for the deed and now amounting to several thousand dollars.
“But there is another consideration, respecting which I have never had any direct communication, I believe, but I can see no reason why it should not be now clearly understood. When you went to Europe in the fall of 1856 I advanced the money necessary for your outfit and the expenses of your tour. This was done through your brother Allan and amounted to about fourteen or fifteen hundred dollars. In my own mind, though I took no note or obligation for it, I treated it like the other advances, to be regarded as advance by way of loan or a gift according to some future arrangement. I propose now to consider that sum as a set off against the note of $600. and, as to all beyond that, to consider it cancelled and discharged. This will make the note mine. At the same time I propose to appropriate it to its original use, to build a barn, in which case it will go to increase the value of the estate already Elizabeth’s, or should anything occur to prevent such use of the money I shall appropriate it in some other way to her use. The effect of this arrangement will be to cancel and discharge all debt and pecuniary obligation of every description from you to myself. You will then leave home with the conscious satisfaction of knowing that you are free from debt: that if by a Providential dispensation you should be prevented from ever returning to your beloved family, provision will have been made at least for a home, for your wife and children.
“Affectionately and ever faithfully
“Your sincere friend
“Lemuel Shaw.”
