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Monday, August 8, 2011

Letter dated; 9 February 1888 Birmingham, England

Edward Cashmore b 5Jun1802 d 29Jul1891
Maria Tomlinson b 10Jul1804 d 13Jul1894
m 15Sep1824
     At a time when life expectancy was around fifty this couple lived to be very old (89 and 90) even by our present day standards.   Edward Cashmore and Maria Tomlinson Cashmore are my third great grandparents.  This is a letter Edward (living in England) wrote in February 1888 to his daughter Sarah Ann Cashmore Kidgell, living in Logan, Utah.   I have the original letter as well as a letter Edward wrote in 1864.  How great is that!  I quote from the Kidgell-Cashmore Histories "How blessed we are that providence allowed Sarah Ann's treasured papers [letters] to remain safe for all those years--tucked away [in a trunk] in the family granary."  This letter is a 'testimony building' letter.
   This letter has no punctuation.

No.3 Back 132 Ickweld Square Monument Road, Birmingham
February 9th 1888
My Dear Girl we received your very kind and welcome letter
glad to hear of your improved health and good prosperity and we thank you most heartily for the help you sent us  and we thank Herman for his good feeling towards us  and we hope you both may enjoy the blessings of God through a long and prosperous life we cannot expect to see you anymore in this life as we know ours is drawing near the end we feel our infirmities very much and it often makes us wish for the change but we must wait with patience willingly God is good and knows what he has to do with us  till it pleases him to call us to eternal glory where we hope to meet everyone of you with all our old friends and acquaintances and where it will be a joyful meeting for all of us where we can be  with all our old friends and acquaintances and where all pain and sorrow is passed away and we are expecting it every week as everyday brings us nearer to it and I pray God bless us all everyday with everything he sees needful for us till that happy time for he is acquainted with all our wants and with all necessities and all the earth is his and the fulness thereof for he made it and he lends all the blessings of this life for a time to his children to prepare for that eternal happiness which he has in store for us through our Lord Jesus Christ and I thank God we are looking for that happy time everyday God helping us through Jesus Christ our Lord and may God bless you all yours is my prayer for evermore and we hope your children will prove a blessing o you if you should live to be old like us and want help when you cannot help yourselves give our love to Fred and girls and all inquiring  Friends we will be glad to hear from you as often as you can make it convenient and accept our Love to all from your ever affectionate parents 
E and M Cashmore


Oh My!  What a wonderful farewell letter!  What a testimony of how sweet death can be for family and friends when we meet on the other side.   What a testimony of knowing to be patient and endure to the end with all the infirmities Edward and Maria must have been experiencing;  to express their  gratefulness for children who are caring for them. I feel that Great-Great-Great-Grandfather Cashmore was a prayerful man, a man who studied and pondered his scriptures.  I feel Maria loved Edward dearly and Her testimony was one with Edward'
    Edward's dies three years after this letter was written.  Maria dies almost three years after Edward.
He dies at the age of eighty nine years one month and twenty four days in a Workhouse Infirmary. A Workhouse Infirmary is a terrible place!  This is very puzzling of why he was put into such a place.   He died of pneumonia and is buried at All Saints, Birmingham, Warwick, England.
Copies of Death Certificate's for
Edward and Maria Cashmore. 


     Following the death of Edward, Maria relocates to Bolton a city eighty miles away and is cared for by her son Daniel and his "new bride" Eliza Waine.   By my calculations she was ninety years and three days old when she died.   On her death certificate her age is recorded as ninety three. During this time in history a body was quickly buried in the area where death occurred so Maria Tomlinson Cashmore was conveniently buried in Bolton, Horwich, Lancastershire, England.

     At an earlier blog about Edward and Maria I thought they were not baptized into the LDS Church until they arrived in Salt Lake City in 1869.  Not so! sarah-anns-parents-arrive-from-england 1869 was a re-baptism which was very common to do at that time.  The entire family of Cashmore's joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in England at about 1852.  I also thought when Edward and Maria moved back to England it was because they were homesick for the adult children, Jane, Daniel and Edward William and grandchildren.   Again, not so!  They were concerned that these children were not being true to their LDS faith and losing their testimonies.   By moving back to England they hoped to be an influence on them and "re-new the spirit of truth in their hearts."  This information comes from a second great grand-daughter who lives in England and knows more of the story that has been handed down through the generations.   Thanks to Gail for getting my story straight.

     Next in the Cashmore/Kidgell line; the life of Fred Cashmore Kidgell.