Catt, Carrie Chapman   General Correspondence  Bradish, Kate C.

[nothing to transcribe]

409-Pearl St. Ottawa Illinois
September fifteenth 1925.

Mrs. Chapman Catt
New York City
N. Y.

Dear cousin :-
I have a very good reason to give for my delay in responding
to both your most welcome letter and also the generous gift of a years subscription
to the Woman Citizen.It was indeed very thoughtful and kind of
you to accept me as member of the family tree and I feel duly proud and
sincerely grateful for such worth-while favors.
As to my reasons mentioned
above,during the first of the present year I was in poor health and under
the treatment of a physian was restricted in many activities,reading, 
typing and writing especially.For several weeks during the spring,pneumonia
and it glandular features stayed in evidence,and recovery of health
and strength returned so slowly that I have been a slave to these physical
ailments.Now I can say, very well thank you with a clear conscience in reply
to the greetings of friends.
Now also I can spend more time with my toys,
books,pen and typewriter,much to my delight altho I must still report to
my Dr.frequently.
Now the "Woman Citizen will receive due and interested
attention and how it will companion my evenings which are quite sure to
be spent without other companies save books and periodicals,as I very 
seldom am away from home after night-fall.
I have been very anxious to
see in print the history of my father's Home Missionary work in Wisconsin
which began while the state was not yet a state but territory.
He lived to be over eighty  .In his old age he began writing his history
but died before it had reached the most interesting events,namely his
connection with the Civil war.He was Chaplain of the 21st.Wis.Reg.and
served until the close of the war.
Then he took up his missionary work
again and continued until his final illness.
I am to copy a condensed
account of his work on my type writer and will send you this account 


which I am sure will interest you and possibly be useful in some lines
of your calling.
Father came to Kenosha in 1842.I was two years of age
at that date,so my memory recalls but one incident of that journey.
A terrible fright fixed this experience some wher in my sub conscions 
mind.However I never mentioned it to mother until I was grown and then I
asked her about it and wondered if it had been a dream or a memory.She
was much amazed to learn that all those years I had been recalling the
experience from time to time nor learning the story of our taking the
steamer at Plattsburg during a terrible thunder storm.In leaving the row
boat in the arms of a sailor,who climbed a rope ladder,I was submurged
in the waves and awakened from a sound sleep in the night.
No wonder it
gave my mind a shock and the incident was recorded.Our memory is a most
marvelous part of the mentality.
You see I am sitting down for a real visit
this morning,trying to make amends for the long delayed response to your
most welcome letter  .Pardon me for taking so much of your precious time.
Do you spend your winter in Florida or California this year  ?I am to stay
here in my own home.When your path winds near enough to my nest will you
not plan to alight at my door and devote as much time as possible to
making the closer acquaintance of
your mother's cousin Kate Clinton Bradish?
I am thinking of writing to Mrs. Newell as I find so
much pleasure in hearing from friends and kindred 
in these sunset years of my life. I live in my own 
home - old style but "comfy"- have a few roomers never more
than four or five. The widow of my youngest son is 
with me and serves more like my own child than
of other parentage. We are well satisfied to be together.
My house stands on the corner of a street frequented
by many auto pleasure seekers from Chicago and we
are located in a very desirable portion of the residential
part of Ottawa. I have quite a lawn and some flowers in
the season. Come some summer time and visit Cousin Kate.



The following account of the Home Missionary experience of Rev.O.P. 
Clinton is copied from The Jubilee Memorial ofWisconsin Congregational
Convention.  1840--1890.

Rev.Orson Pierce Clinton
may be called the veteran home missionary of Wisconsin,having borne a
commission from the A.H.M.Society for a half century.
He began his ministry in Lewis,Essix County ,New York.After a few years
(probably about seven) he came in November 1842 to Kenosha Wisconsin.
After three years of service here and at Lake Mills and Fort Atkinson,
He was commissioned as an itinerant missionary for Northern Wisconsin,
which meant in those days,Lake Winnebago and vacinity.
He made his home at Winnebago Rapids,now
Neenah,and in'48 having received a deed of a ten acre lot on the Island
from Gov.Doty,he built him a house which was his home until his death,
June 17th.1890Mr. Clinton was the pioneer preacher of a large extent of
territory about Lake Winnebago. He was the first to preach in nearly all 
the towns that have sprung up the past forty years in that region , 
He gathered more than twenty churches,some of which are now the strongest
in the state.His journeying was almost entirely by horse and buckboard or
marriage,by which means he traveled over 90,000 miles and preached some
4,000 sermons.He was an earnest temperance man and never failed to pour
in hot shot upon the traffic of intoxicants and words of loving persuasion in
behalf of the unfortunate inebriate.He was a devoted patriot.At the opening
of the Civil War his sympathies were early enlisted in the securing
of recruits for the army,and himself served for three years as chaplain
of the 21st.Wisconsin Reg. winning the love of the men to a wonderful degree.
His funeral occured at the time of a reunion of his regiment in [Minneapolis?]. Many were the
old veterans who gathered about his casket and dropping the silent tear
said"Farewell Chaplain.He was a good man.How well we loved him."
A long procession followed his remains to the cemetery and there,
with his old friends and comrade gathered about his grave,with military
and Christian honors he was laid to rest. 
His last work was the supply of the Menasha
pulpit for several months,preaching with unusual power.He still brought
forth fruit in old age,being 81years and six months at the time of his death.

Letter to CCC's 1st cousin
once-removed Kate Clinton Bradish.
Kate's father is C's Maternal
godfather brothers-
Family Clinton Notes

Transcribed and reviewed by volunteers participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.