Wilson writes:

 

      “…I have visited several churches, made a number of subscriptions and received a little money. The balance of the subscriptions will be paid in by the meeting of Presbytery. On last Sabbath week I was with Re. McKnight Williamson? In Tuscarora, Valley. This little church has recently forwarded a box of clothing and $20 in money to Phila. …[ Details of bequests to the Church]…Some business of my own called me to Phila last week. While there (I only spent one day there) with the aid of Mr. Allen, I learned that Mr. John McCrea intends to dispatch a fine vessel to Calcutta in a month or six weeks which will probably be the only one that will leave that port for some time. Now Dear Brother cant you let us off by that time. I do feel exceedingly anxious to be gone and if arguments were necessary I think I could mention some which you yourself would consider as good. I have just had a letter from Br Morrison in which he says he thinks you do not intend sending us out until late in the Autumn – “the later the better”. He says, “Mr. McCrea was to call to converse with him on the subject. On my return–from Phla I spent last Sabbath with Rev. Dr. Martin at Chanceford. They had taken up a collection for Schnider under the ABCFM…Dr. Martin showed me a letter from Schinder on the subject of a transfer, in which he says he has no idea of ever being connected with our Board – that if the Presbytery of New Castle will not return him in his present relation, they may drop him. Dr. M says this will be done.  I expect to leave this in a day or two for Hagerstown. I aim to be with Br. Wynkoop on Sabbath morning and in Williamsport in the afternoon and evening. From that I go on toe Manchester, Va. where I expect to be married on tomorrow week. I will not suffer this to interfere with the duties of my agency. I have appointment in advance for as many Sabbaths as I hope to spend in this country. Dr. Houston is in the Northumberland Presby. Pleading the cause of our Board. He is to be at home on next Sabbath and then intends returning. Will you have the goodness to have the Chronicle sent gratuitously to Rev. John Dicken, Bloomfield, Perry County…Also to Miss Matilda Madden, Bloomfield, perry County. And notice if your think proper the formation of the Female Foreign Missionary Society of Bloomfield on which Mrs. Barnett is Pres. Mrs. McIntire Tres. And Miss Matilda Madden Sect…”

 

            By the time Henry Wilson wrote this letter, he was already, at 29, a seasoned missionary. The son of a Pennsylvania college professor, he had originally studied Medicine but then had instead chosen to become a missionary. He was first sent, at the age of 24, to follow the “Trail of Tears” of the Cherokee Indians who had been forcibly removed from their ancestral home in Georgia to the vast unexplored wilderness of what is now the state of Oklahoma. He arrived at a moment of “faction, feud and turbulence” among the Indians, in surroundings as foreign to them as they were to Wilson, who found himself 200 miles from the nearest white family.  After a year among the Cherokee, he was sent to the Choctaws, also “removed”, from Mississippi to a region bordering Mexican Texas. There Wilson found “no houses, no cultivation, no supplies or provisions” and was obliged to clear the ground to build his own cabin and grow the corn and potatoes on which he would live.  One summer, he was even directed to visit the “wild Indians” living near the Rocky Mountains, a journey so dangerous that he had to accompany a troop of Dragoons commanded by General Henry Leavenworth, who himself died on the expedition. It was after returning to Choctaw territory that Wilson took a ride south to Texas where he encountered a camp of wild and woolly pioneers.  They offered him some of their alcohol. He refused. They asked him to join in their card game. Again,  he refused.  “Well”, asked the men, “what can you do?” Wilson replied, “Preach”.  “So preach”, they declared, and the 26 year-old missionary delivered what, according to tradition, was the first Presbyterian sermon in the territory of Texas. After two more years of laborious service on the frontier, Wilson returned east to marry the daughter of a Revolutionary Army surgeon who was willing to join her husband n his “privations and toils”. Together they took the “tedious journey” to Indian territory, but Wilson’s new wife survived there only a few months before dying of fever. That tragedy brought him a respite during which he returned to Pennsylvania, where he spent two years at the University to finally earn his Medical degree. 

 

It was at this point that Wilson wrote this letter, while waiting impatiently, after securing an appointment to a foreign mission in India. Then came his second marriage, which he so casually mentions in the letter, and months of waiting for a ship that would carry the Wilsons and other missionaries to Calcutta, where they finally arrived in April 1838. There one of the other missionary wives died of Asiatic fever, and others took sick, including Mrs. Wilson who, however, recovered in time to accompany her husband to his new mission on the banks of the Ganges. Together they established an orphanage where they remained for the next seven years until, in 1845, they returned to the United States.