My Dear Cousin Sallie

It is with the greatest pleasure that I answer those precious lines that you wrote to me. I received them on the last Sabath. It was the last day of the protracted meeting at Peavine. It was a very good meeting indeed. Margaret & Elizabeth Moore profest religion, joined the Church & I saw them diped under the water. Left Amanda by her self. I do not know how many joined the Church. You just ought to have been here when Margaret & Lizzie profest. Well, I will quit talking about the meeting & tell you something about other things.

Lizzies foot has got well & she has got the sore eyes. I will go down there this evening or tomorrow. I go to school yet to Mr. Moore. Nearly all the girls used Snuff in School I have not quit using it. Cousin Mary wrote to you & directed her letter to Mr. Mcguires store & she said she expected they broke it open and told me not to direct my letters there. Joseph Major sends his love to you. Tell James & Henry I am very much obliged to them for their love & I send to them my poor doubled & twisted love. Liz Thedford sends her love to you & James & Henry. Tell James William says he will write to him & Margaret Moore said she would write to you & I expect Liz Thedford will write to you. Well I recon I must close my short letter. Please excuse. I have not got tiem to write any more at present. I will quit by asking you to write to me first & I looked for a letter every mail day for a long time & I thought you was not a going to write & I quit looking but I was very glad to get this. I remain your most affectionate friend

Mary J. Simmons

My pen is bad, my ink is pale, my love to you will never fail.


Southern Women and Tobacco Use
According to numerous observers of the time, the most distinctive characteristic that set apart many southern women from their Northern sisters was their fondness for tobacco.[1] Time and again, Federal soldiers commented about encounters with snuff-dipping or pipe-smoking women and girls in the Confederacy, and the habit occasionally prompted remarks from regional sources as well.

By the latter 1830s many of the younger generation of Southern women had developed a tobacco practice distinctive to their region, especially when contrasted to the growing anti-tobacco sentiment among reform-minded Northern women. They did not take snuff, a dry, finely powdered tobacco, in their noses, a method that had largely disappeared in both areas. Instead, Southern women began to “dip” it into their mouths.