(Livingston Manor;
received by Robert in New York: October 5, 1722)



My Dear Husband,

I hope this will find you in better health than when you left me. I am very worried about you, [viz.] that ever since you have been away I do not hear anything from you. I think [our] cousin Veets can stay with you to come up together with you when our yacht comes back there. I would like to send our yacht back with 10 or 12 horses which are beautiful, for they are doing us no good – if we can get some more rum and molasses for those. For other people are working with them, and [at our place] they run away and get lost – for we need rum and molasses.
I have sent the note-book for the flour down to you, and what I need is written in it: a keg of starch. 12 Bottles from Van Hoorn are in it, and the small bag in which the indigo should be contains Naetye’s nuts. There is a keg of butter for everyone [and] an oxhoofd1) of apples. This note of Wilm Kornet’s is 5 lb.; that has to be paid for [in] 35 kegs of butter so that 33 remain to be sold.
I am sending you 4 lb. to [be charged] to Wilm Kornet’s account. So that you can add 20 more shillings then. I have handed Vloor to the doctor’s wife for 8 days in order to get well again, for 2 pieces of eight. We will have about 40 beasts, but where I thought to get them Syerp2) got them. Now we have 30 beasts, and I daresay I’ll get the other 10.
Can you arrange with De Syeu3) that he has some more patience? Maybe he will take a horse. I am sending Robbert one schepel of large white peas, and to Naetye 4 tons of flour [and] one ton4) of cornel in a small sloop, [and] chestnuts and nuts for you and cousin Veets.

Your Beloved Wife
Alida Livinghston.
Notes:
1) Apparently the “oxhoofd” was not only used for liquids but for solid matter as well.
2) Spelled “Sherp” in Robert’s letters.
3) = possibly: “De Jeudt”.
4) Alida writes: “een non kornel”. “non” doesn’t make any sense to me. None of the many dictionaries I consulted lists a meaning which is probable in this context. I think, therefore, that it is a slip of the pen and that Alida intended to write “ton”.