Black creek NC May the 20 1867

Bureau of Refugees Freedmen

Dear, sir your dispatch just come to hand last night after dark, the post master sais it never reached hear until saturday last. Jourdin Artis took a contract of digin 26,000 bushels of marl sometime last summer & comenced but did not threw out half the quantity he engage to throw out & become in debt & quit the Job & has now called on me for asettement yet neither I have not Sean him since about that time I should of gone to your office to day but I am so very busy in my farm. I am wating to hear from you & do as you advise.           Yrs Verry, Respectfully.  Calvin Bone

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Forty year-old white farmer Calvin Bone headed a household in the 1860 census of Black Creek township, Wilson County. (He also appeared in the slave schedule as the owner of one black woman, aged 36.) There were two Jordan Artises listed in censuses of communities near Black Creek in 1860: (1) in the census of Buck Swamp township, Wayne County, 30 year-old Jordan Artis is listed in the household of his parents Vinson and Clarky Artis, (2) in the census of Saulston township, Wayne County, 27 year-old Jordan Artis in the household of his mother Olive Artis.

“Marl” is a loose or crumbling earthy deposit (as of sand, silt, or clay) that contains a substantial amount of calcium carbonate, i.e. lime. It was commonly used a fertilizer.

North Carolina Freedmen’s Bureau Assistant Commissioner Records 1862-1870, http://www.familysearch.org.