CA74

Letter from Hal Herring to his sister Nora Herring Roberson 
(C. Avis Catalog entry #74)

J. H. Herring
Residence
Nola Knoll

Postal address Mosheim, Tenn  R.F.D. No. 4  Sept 20 1903

Mrs. Nora Herring Roberson
Wichita Falls, Texas

My Dear Sister
Yours of 11# inst recd - I am glad to be in communication with you, it has been so long since I heard from you.  I am glad you were mention all your children and sent program of school exercises.  I am proud of my nephew and glad he is named for my father as I was myself & I trust he will bring more credit to the name than I have.  Keep him encouraged to exert himself to his highest possible attainments.  I hope you will send him up to see us some day.  Dick sent me your letter to him in which you promised to write to us.  so been waiting for your letter.  You wrote Dick a longer letter than you did me but I will not be jealous if you will do better next time.  I believe Dick has had the pleasure of seeing you since you have been grown.  I was disappointed in not getting to see you when I visited your home.  You ask me to write you of myself and family.  Well I have never had good health and never will.  When you were a baby I had typhoid fever and was dilerious and when you cried I thought you were a kid and asked our [little] black boy to catch you for me.  I almost "crossed over the river" then and have lingered on the border several times since my ill health has made my life a failure.  I have been afflicted with the same maladie that took our father and bro and has so greviously afflicted Dick.  When I lived in Boston I spent three mos in the hospital and had the gaul stones removed from my liver it was a fearful ordeal and almost fatal.  As Father Ryan says "I nearly died I almost touched the door that swings between time and evermore".  I am to bilous and nervous now to write with pen so please excuse pencil.

Louise and the baby are in good health.  We have a pretty little brown eyed boy just 4 mos old.  He is rather dark complected but that is the Herring in him, it is good old Norman stock and but for gaul stones it would accomplish something.  Teach your children to remember that they are descended from Wm. Herring from Normandy whose son Wm. Herring married Hester Marion of S. C.  Their son Wm. J. Herring married Narcissa Sevier (for whom you are named) whose son John Henry Herring (Harry) was your father.  

Tell Harry he now has his linealogy 5 generations back and to strive to add luster on it five times five to come.  My son Henry will be 51 years old on 13# of Nov next.  He hasn't much Herring in him and I fear not much of the good qualities of his mother who was one of the best women ever on earth.  I would rather write you something cheerful bout myself but just of present there is not much cheer bout me.  When I'm resurrected I hope they will forget my liver or give me a  new one. I know I would have a new sole with a new liver.  I did want to set you right bout your Aunt Sallie Kind.  She was a good woman and when young was a beauty.  You need never be ashamed to be like her. 


Write soon to your affectionate
Bro Hal