McElfresh, after reading his wife’s letter about her health and their children- “70 miles from both I could not refrain from shedding tears, chiefly from the sudden joy to hear you were all well and a deep solicitude to be with you…I am glad to hear that you….are better reconciled to my absence…” He himself was feeling better, the “pain in my head” had become so great that he went to a doctor to be “bled…I lost a pint and half of blood and lo! I am perfectly relieved…Twas nothing all his time but a preternatural fulness of the vessel of the head…I keep very close to my room where I am very comfortable and study the business I am sent here to attend to. I go to bed seldom before 12 oclock and rise with the break of dawn and take a long walk. I am getting into good business habits. There is nothing here to amuse or divert. I do not suppose the Session will close before the first of March…You may be sure I shall vote always for the earliest adjournment…”

McElfresh was reputed to be the largest landowner in Frederick County and after his marriage to the daughter of one of the County’s wealthiest citizens, he may have been the richest man in the state. He became a doctor, but then abandoned medicine to study law, becoming well known as “an advocate for the cause of the poor”. After his election to the House of Delegates in 1830, he focused on reform legislation. It was entirely through his persistent efforts that Maryland enacted a law abolishing imprisonment for debt, which had afflicted not just the poor but also such upper-class gentlemen as Robert Morris, financier of the American Revolution, and the father of Robert E. Lee. Thanks to McElfresh Maryland was one of the first states to abolish debtors’ prisons.