“I take up my pen with a heavy heart, for I have sad news to send you. God has seen fit in his perfect wisdom & goodness to call Hosea, the patient, the good, the gentle to join his Mother in another & a better world.
“I thought it most hard that he should be called away, just as we had fair hopes of realizing what we had labored for so hard for so many years.”
Ethan Grosh, in a Sept. 7, 1857, letter to his father
“I have no words that will describe our feelings of grief and sorrow at the news contained in the (letter). I read only the first lines, and feeling utterly unable to control my feelings or voice, uttered the words, ‘Hosea is dead!’ and . . . retired to our room, whither Mother soon followed me, and we wept long and sadly together. Oh, how often have we mourned over your united failures, disappointments and misfortunes; and hoped, almost against hope, that the tide might yet turn, and bring you both back again, to our arms.”
A.B. Grosh, in an Oct. 25, 1857, reply
