3xx3 (Letter from Col. William Martin, son of Brigadier General Joseph Martin to Lyman C. Draper - transcribed by William Kent Martin)

Dixon Spring Tenn. 4^th of June 1842

D Sir,

On my return home lately from a long journey to the south, I found a letter from my brother John C. Martin of Cannon County, enclosing one from you to him, informing that you were collecting materials, for the purpose of writing out & publishing, Biographical Sketches of distinguished Pioneers of the West and requested him to furnish you with the life & public services of his father (& my father) General Joseph Martin. And my brother presuming that from my age (being much older than him) that I would know more of the particulars than he and has referred it to me.

I am therefore about to undertake, tho as I am quite old, I write with great difficulty, as you readily see by this scroll. I am one of my fathers oldest children, was in active life many years before his death. Was with him much in his western enterprises, and in addition he gave me a history of his early life. So that I will be able to furnish pretty fully the particulars you wish. This however will be unavoidably tedious from the difficulty with which I write, & the venerableness of his character. I am much pleasured that this Biographical work is undertaken, & by one too, so competent, as I suppose you to be from what ex Governor Campbell of Va, has said of you in a letter to me on the same subject. He is anxious that this work should be prosecuted, & is disposed to give it all the facilities in his power. Some of his own ancestry came within the purview of your work. They were contemporaries and intimate friends of my father. It must be gratifying to every patriot to see the memory of those great & valuable men, who done so much, and suffered so much for the west, snatched, as it were, from oblivion & held up as a memento to after generations. And I am peculiarly gratified that my venerable father will not be, as I believe by any means, the least luminous in his mighty galaxy. I expect it will be some two or three weeks, before I can forward my manuscript as after I have scribbled it off, it will have to be copied into a fair hand, so that you read it.

With respect I am your aged friend. Wm Martin