When I was in town last Mr Hutchinson told me there were funds raised and in the hands of a committe for the purpose of repairing losses similar to mine, which, free state men had met with.

As you are the only man that I feel sufficiently acquainted with, to apply to will you take the trouble to see whether I can get anything. I have lost about $700. I did not expect to receive one dollar of it back again, and should not now ask for it, but I am sick & have run out & need it now as much as these did to whom I gave it. My first loss was a pair of horses worth $300. When the disturbances first commenced last fall, one of my horses was lent & rode further & faster than he ever was before & tied out in the prairie over night in the rain took sick & died very soon. I had a man working for me when I hired to go to Lawrence & stay through the war, I let him have the other horse

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to ride. He said he rode it into a hole or ravine when the horse fell & injured itself so that it died.

I then let Mr Lowry & Warren & others have a mule to ride while organizing the state during the winter. It was very hard riding very cold weather & very difficult to get food & shelter for the mule. And if he had not been a mule he would have died from hardship. As it was the mule got sick & has not got over it yet. I lost her work during the spring. and to say nothing of her services. I lost by her sickness I think $30.—I gave for the mule in Mo. $170. I kept several free state men who were sick. & some refugees & some emigrants, from one to ten at a time without compensation. Mr Haskell who went west & north for men to defend Lawrence in Nov. was taken sick immediately on his return & staid with me from that time till the middle of april about twenty weeks. He was poor, sold some of his clothing & other things got money enough to go home and returned to Maine. His board was worth $50. & during some of the time he worked a little, say $10. worth. Our house has not been free from sick persons since. some times as many as four & five at a time. I have kept no account

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For the last six months I should estimate our visitors at an average of six per week 26 weeks & 2 [xxx] per week would make $390. Some of them have paid a little, say in the whole, $90. So many people using our quilts & blankets lying on the floor & in the tents has used them nearly all up. So we are minus this item. A new tent which is valued at $20. & which I procured at Ft. Riley last fall went into the service by request of Col. Lane & has not been returned. It is worth $15.00 One of my best oxen which I paid $100. & yoke fer last spring was killed in Lawrence about the last of August. The ox was worth $50.00

I expected to give all these items gratis, to the free state cause, and any thing else that I had to secure its triumph. But just now I am out of health, out of funds, out of clothes & have no means of going on, and procuring what I need fer myself and the family. I do not present it as a bill demanding payment, But if the committee see proper to allow me anything it will be thankfully received.

Very Truly
Augustus Wattles

Kansas
Oct. 15, 1856