Posted By:	Julie Hampton Ganis
	Email:
	Subject:	Re: Capt. Stalham Wing born VT,1807-Letter from Napa, Calif. 1879
	Post Date:	June 15, 2005 at 23:52:42
	Message URL:	http://genforum.genealogy.com/wing/messages/1060.html
	Forum:	Wing Family Genealogy Forum
	Forum URL:	http://genforum.genealogy.com/wing/

Letter from Napa, Napa Co., California dated Apr 4, 1879 from STALHAM WING to ASA HARTSHORN. Some of the writing is hard to read, but I’ve transcribed some of it as best as I could. “Napa, Napa Co Cal. Apl 4 1879 Asa Hartshorn Esqr, My dear old friend, Your letter of the 17 ult was a welcome surprise to me. I thank you for it. I had hardly expected to hear from Lenox friends…” (Seems that ASA HARTSHORN was from Lenox, Ashtabula County, Ohio.) “I judge from your letter your wife has gone to the better home….” (ASA HARTSHORN had been married to JULIA ANN ELLIS KINGSBURY who had died in 1861.) “Soon after my wifes death I received a long kind letter from NEWTON FRENCH telling me of his fathers death….” "...My wifes brother died in California leaving quite an estate the family insisted I should come out & with her brother settle it…. Not expecting to be gone longer than one year, when I arrived found it had been administered on by ???? me here, they would not give it up till the law compelled them, a long ???? followed, then was but little left. I bought a farm in this valley….. but my wife & I worked very hard for about sixteen years…” “...I was taken sick for six weeks not expected to live my wife cared for me all the time ???? no one to watch with me. I began to mend, she was taken with peumonia & only lived five days, she passed on to the better home trusting in the full attonement made by the blessed (?saviour)…. It has been a lonely seven years to me, after about two years of feeble health, I recovered and now enjoy better health than for the last fifteen years, have met with severe losses, so have but very little of this worldly goods left but the time is short…. I live entirely alone, do my own cooking…..Cal. is a lovely climate… was sorry to hear of Mrs. KINGSBURYS sickness, if ready, better to go and be with Jesus, than remain where there is so much sin & disappointment. Please give my kind regards to any of the old friends that may be left…. Give me a full history of people and circumstances there, if cannot send me your county paper. How I should love to visit the old place. Your friend Stalham Wing.” Further research reveals that STALHAM WING was born in Wilmington, Windham County, Vermont in 1806, the son of Bani WING and wife Lucy Eastman CLARY of Massachusetts. He married ELIZABETH VAN PELT in 1836. He had been a merchant at one time in Lenox, Ashtabula County, Ohio. STALHAM and wife ELIZABETH were shown on the 1870 census in Napa, California, and he was shown on the 1880 census living alone as a widower. A website about Mount Veeder wineries says: “Winemaking in the region dates back to the 1860s, when Captain STALHAM WING presented the first six bottles of Mount Veeder area wine at the Napa County Fair.” He died in 1888 in Newark, Ohio at the home of his brother, LUCIUS B. WING.