Southwold,
March 9, 1832

I am indeed the happy Mother of a very fine and healthy little girl whose resemblance to her dear father at this early age is truly astonishing. I had a long and severe labor being taken on the Sunday Evening ... and not abed until half past one on the Wednesday morning. The last seven hours beating all that I ever imagined of mortal suffering ... As a wife I have been the happiest creature in the world and I trust my fair, blue eyed Kate will weave the knot of love still tighter around the heart of that truest and tenderest of all friends, my beloved husband ... My dear Sister Sarah was with me during my anxious moments and has taken the management of the house ever since. Moodie is in London, he was forced to leave me ten days after my confinement to meet his uncle, Mr. Dunbar, who after coming upwards of six hundred miles on his journey to see us, fell ill in Town and found himself incapable of journeying further. Moodie was loath to leave me but I persuaded him to go up and see his uncle at the Hotel ... What time we shall leave for Canada, the return of Mr. Reid, my brother's father-in-law, will determine. He has been a successful settler in Upper Canada for twelve years and from him we received information with regard to the country and the advantages of Emigration which formed the chief inducement for our own ... Moodie promises to bring dear Katie home with him ... Catherine has, I suppose, told you that my brother Thomas is now a Captain of the East Indiaman in which he made his former voyages. She is a ship of 800 tons and he a young man of 23. Too young, I almost fear, for such an important trust and perhaps the youngest Captain of an East Indiaman that ever sailed out of the Thames¹ ... We shall settle near Peterborough within a mile of my brother and two of Mr. Reid. My brother has already secured for my Dunbar 146 acres of excellent land fronting a small lake which he says, when cleared, will command an enchanting view² ... If Mr. Bird could get my song of London inserted in either of the Suffolk papers I should feel greatly obliged to him.³

1. This reference to Thomas Strickland suggests he was born in 1808 or 1809, though Lloyd's Captains' Register (1869) and parish records list 1807 as his birth date.

2. According to Upper Canada Land Petitions 'M,' Bundle 19, 1828–35, File RG1 L3, vol. 360, Public Archives of Canada, Samuel Strickland had purchased several lots in the Newcastle District, County of Northumberland, at a public sale on 1 August 1831. One of these, the west half of Lot 21, Concession 6, Douro Township, became the Moodies' backwoods home from early 1834 to late 1839. However, these records also reveal that J.W.D. Moodie actually owned several parcels of land in Northumberland (later Peterborough County), some obtained as Crown grants, some apparently purchased from previous owners.

3. 'London: A National Song' was published in Fraser's Town and Country (February–March 1832), 154.