G. S. L. City, Nov. 1861.
Miss Angeline E. Worden,
Throopsville, Cayuga Co. New York.
My Dear Niece:-Though we are personally strangers, please accept my thanks for your very welcome, frank, and musical letter of Oct. 6, which, aside from a cheerful compliance with your request, I take pleasure in answering.
In reply to your first question, I am happy to inform you that I was very well acquainted with your parents, and was grieved to learn that your father's health was so poor, but pleased to learn that your mother and the rest of the family were well. My own and the health of my large family is very good.
As to my paying you all a visit, however much I might be pleased to do so, I am at present unable to inform you when I shall be able to; though I expect to again visit the States at a period when the rights and lives of all, irrespective of sect or party, are more respected and better protected than they were when I left the States, or than they now are there. This reason does not weigh in your case; and while war and bloodshed are rife east of the mountains, and peace and prosperity abound in Utah, permit me to invite you, your parents and their family to pay me a visit at your earliest convenience, assuring you, one or all, of a hearty welcome to my comfortable and commodious mountain home, and of courteous and kindly treatment during your stay. When will you come?
Please give your mother my thanks for her kind respects, and be so kind as to present her and your father my regards and good wishes for their welfare, and say to them that a letter from either or both of them will be gladly received and promptly answered.
Your Uncle James is here and well, as are also his wife and child. He has made my house his home, since his arrival in Utah, when not absent on a mission. Now having a family growing up around him, he naturally feels anxious for an opportunity to secure a home of his own, and I have fitted him out comfortably for a fair start, which he purposes making in Manti, Sanpete County, 133 miles a little east from south of this City, for which place he expects to leave here to-day.
Your Aunt Mirian's daughters, your cousins Elizabeth and Vilate, are well, and are blest with good husbands and children, and are very pleasantly situated in this city and near by.
Should you, or your parents, or any others of the family, many or few, the more the better, conclude to pay me a visit next season, I should be pleased to have you inform me at your earliest convenience, that I may instruct some one of our Elders to advise you in regard to reaching Florence, N. T., and also in matters of outfit and mode of transportation across the plains. Our companies of immigrants aim to leave Florence about the 1st of July, and present facilities for travel are probably such as to enable you to reach Florence from your home in about two days, after which your progress will be much slower; but, with a tolerable amount of patience, the continued change of new scenery and the varied incidents of travel greatly tend to render a trip across the plains quite interesting and pleasant.
Agreeable to your request I herewith inclose for you my likeness and a lock of my hair, for which, in return, agreeable to your promise, I trust to in due time receive your likeness and "a good long letter".
With kind regards to yourself and the family, I remain affectionately,
Your Uncle,
Brigham Young
P. S. If Amasa Bonny is still living, and you know his whereabouts, will you be so kind as to inform me? Also where David Rockwell and family, and your Uncles Joseph and Asa Works, or any of the rest of the family are residing, as I should like to learn their places of abode, Amasa Bonny and Asa Works lived near Quincy, at the time we left Illinois.