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My dear Sir,
Having at length complied with your desires to obtain Flowers & Seeds from Augusta, I send you the result of my labours, which at one time I had not the least hope of being able to do in a satisfactory manner.
Under the afflicting but unscrutable decree of an all-wise Providence, we have recently been overwhelmed with the most bitter loss of our darling infant and only son of 19 months old by the aggravated death of drowning!! Painful as it is to record, distance of time and place compels me.
Captain Molloy, myself and his little sisters had been playing with him watching his vigorous and frolicsome mood just after breakfast on 11th November 1837 - We separated each to our necessary duties, (that morning I was preparing to bake and churn). I left dear little Johnnie in my only servant girl's charge. She imagined from having seen him with Mary and near his Papa that he was still there. Mary appeared without him, which instantly struck us, as they were inseparable. Charlotte had put the dear child in his cradle, and not finding him where she last saw him, she asked Molloy, then me. I had not seen him, but answered he had his bell on (a little bell he wore round his waist, in case of his straying into the bush). I instantly ran out, and on her running up and down and not finding him, I exclaimed: "Have you been to the well?" and became quite alarmed. Captain Molloy said, "Do not frighten yourself, he never goes there!" The fatal truth stole over me, and on Charlotte going to the well, she said: "Here's the Boy," and pulled out that darling precious child, lifeless, his flaxen curls and dripping, his little countenance so placid, he looked fast asleep, but not dead; and we do not believe he really was so until some minutes later. But the medical man was at the Vasse, and we knew not what to do. We tried every means of restoration, but to no effect. And that lovely, healthy child, who had never known pain or sickness and who had been all mirth and joyousness 5 precious hours the last time we beheld him together, was now a stiff corpse, but beautiful and lovely even in DEATH the well is in full view of the windows, about a stone's cast off, concealed certainly by the virgillia and Mimosa trees.  He had not been absent ten minutes, but from being a very fat heavy child, and after eating an enormous breakfast I am told, this increased his rapid step from life to Death; but had any Medical Man been near, I am fully persuaded my little Johnny might have been saved.
Forgive me, my dear Sir, for thus using towards a Stranger the freedom and minute detail that Friendship warrants and desires. Our children and our necessary occupations fraught as they are with uncontemplated interest, engross the sole attention and exertions of myself and my excellent husband; - Acute indeed was the blow, and when you reflect how dead we are to the World, and completely weaned from that sphere of pursuits, actions and modes of life in which we used to move, I trust you will pardon and excuse my entering thus egotistically and minutely on our present affliction.