W. H. McVey Fresno, California - March 13 Fresno, California March 13 Dear Uncle Ike and Family I suppose you think yourselfs well rid of me but will bother you with a letter anyway. We are getting along very well thank you. We bought nine and one half acres about as far from town as we were from Sedalia nearly all in grapes but had enough vacant ground left to plant a family orchard. We planted peaches plums oranges lemmons pears olives nectarines almonds and English walnuts. this is a great place for flowers and both love flowers. There was a lot of them here when we came and Virginia has put out more than a hundred each of roses geraniums and chrysthanthemums. Roses bloom nearly all winter and geraniums stay out all winter wild flowers are blooming and the poppies are a wonder. Land is very high out here. We were visiting not long ago at Dinuba thirty miles south of here and one lady had just sold an eightht acre of Malaga grapes for three thousand an acre so you had better move your big farm out here but it don’t all sell that high but you can’t get a good bearing vineyard any where for less than a thousand an acre. We made two trips to the mountains one of them was to great National Park where the big trees are. We are in sight of the mountains, Sierras on the east and the coast range on the west and can see snow on them most of the time. Virginia has run into a lot of her old Kentucky friends and neighbors that she knew when she was a girl one family only a mile from us. We like it fine here and will stay if we can make a go of it. Ab’s folks are all well and seem to be making a go of it. They were out today. He is running a stage line. I still think I have some woman. She said the last thing you said to her was to take good care of me and she is. Yours as ever W. H. McVey
My note: This letter does not have a year on it. Stagecoaches ran until around 1920. However, by 1920, Ike Elliott was quite ill and not in any shape to be moving to California. A better guess is that it was written near the end of the 19th century. I will try to confirm the actual date and post it.