Documenting the American South Logo
Legend Informational Note
See the Page Image
     Mouseover Available
Title: Letter from John Pettigrew to Charles Pettigrew, April 12, 1796: Electronic Edition.
Author: Pettigrew, John, 1779-1799
Funding from the University Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill supported the electronic publication of this title.
Text transcribed by Bari Helms
Images scanned by Bari Helms
Text encoded by Brian Dietz
First Edition, 2005
Size of electronic edition: ca. 11K
Publisher: The University Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
2005

No Copyright in US

The electronic edition is a part of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill digital library, Documenting the American South.
Languages used in the text: English
Revision history:
2005-07-22, Brian Dietz finished TEI/XML encoding.
Source(s):
Title of collection: Pettigrew Family Papers (#592), Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Title of document: Letter from John Pettigrew to Charles Pettigrew, April 12, 1796
Author: JPettigrew
Description: 4 pages, 4 page images
Note: Call number 592 (Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
Editorial practices
The text has been encoded using the recommendations for Level 5 of the TEI in Libraries Guidelines.
Originals are in the Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Original grammar, punctuation, and spelling have been preserved.
Page images can be viewed and compared in parallel with the text.
Any hyphens occurring in line breaks have been removed, and the trailing part of a word has been joined to the preceding line.
All quotation marks, em dashes and ampersand have been transcribed as entity references.
All double right and left quotation marks are encoded as ".
All single right and left quotation marks are encoded as '.
All em dashes are encoded as —.
Indentation in lines has not been preserved.

For more information about transcription and other editorial decisions, see the section Editorial Practices.
Letter from John Pettigrew to Charles Pettigrew , April 12, 1796
Pettigrew, John, 1779-1799



Page 1
Orange County, University, April 12th 1796

Hond Father;—

Your most affectionate letter came safe to hand on the 19th March by Mr Outlaw.1 It gave me no small satisfaction to hear that all were well, & that Glasgow returned safe back before you set out for Bonerva, for I doubt not your anxiety for his arrival was great; but I am in hopes you have been over, got your rice beat out, and returned before now, although you have had very disagreeable weather, it has been so warm that the rice I suppose broke very much, & it was also very laborious for the beaters. Upon the reception of yours I rote back by Mr Watson to my Mother which I am in hopes she has received before this time.
Brother Ebenezer & myself are both well at present, only the spleen which is a little increased, but the reason of that is because I have not taken

Page 2
so much exercise, and have been more confined than when I was at home. My nose is not more inflamed than when you saw me.
There are here at this time 86 Students: they are all in a perfect state of health; except one who has taken with the rheumatism last knight.
Cursing & swearing is carried on here to the greatest perfection; even from the smallest to the largest: they vent out the oath's with greatest ease immaginable. They have lately got a supply of boks, & those are chiefly Payn's Age of reason, they prefer it to all the books that were ever wrote since the creation of the World; they also say that he was sent into the World to set menkind to liberty; but I would not have you think that they are all of this opinion but there are are a great majority of this cast. The house will not contain more than three or four boy's, except the trustees should

Page 3
alter the law and have eight in each room; but I am in hopes they will not do it for I find it very difficult to get six well-behaved in a room as we have not an opportunity of choosing & in my opinion it would be almost impossible to get eight wellbred boys in a room. I shall now inform you of something as strange as what I wrote upon my first arrival here: that is we have moved into another room. One of the young men into whose room we moved, when we came up first, fully acted up to the charater we gave him, but the other we were much deceived in; he is disliked by more than half the students in Colledge, & as to his roommates he desired to reign King & said if we did not obey him he would use rough methods; this we greatly disliked knowing that no student durst take upon himself that authority, & that here we were all on an equality and to be room-mates and not one superior to another.

Page 4
I shall say nothing of my new companions untill I get better acquainted with them.
As to our diet we have had no reason to complain considering the scarcity of the year for all kinds of provisions. You mentioned coming up in July but I am of opinion you had much better not, as provisions on the road will be extremely scarce, the weather very warm, & the journey fatiguing when it would answer almost the same purpose to send up and I am certain there will be several opportunities between now and then. We forgot our Greek Lexicon which we shall want by July.
There is to be a quarterly examination next saturday it is not certain whether the Trustees will be here or not. My paper & leisure time both giving out. I can give you no more news at present. My Brother joins me in sending his [duties] to our mother . I remain your dutiful son.

Endnotes:

1. Possibly Morgan Outlaw .