Dear Cousin Vernice:

     By the Penn Bulletin I see you have been touring Europe this past summer and are now home teaching again. This reminds me that three years ago were out this way and were to visit us, but didn’t make it. I never heard why. Then the next year you expected to see us but I never heard a word from you till this note in the Penn Bulletin. I am glad to hear that you are still active.

     It might be a good thing if this branch of the Baileys did a little more corresponding. I might have heard from Edna two or three times and once or twice since since [sic] she was married again. I have been sort of expecting them to get out this way one of these days but haven’t seen yet. Evelyn was here last year for a few days and I’ve heard from her once or twice since, and have had a letter from Bill or his wife a couple of times. These people that are still younger are still busy and haven’t the time to write I suppose. You see I have passed my 80th birthday so for several years haven’t been so occupied that I couldn’t dig up some of my relatives.

     You probably have heard that I have digging into the past and trying to straighten out lines of descent. The above crest is the Cartland crest but there are so many Bailey crests that I have never found out if any of them belong to the Baileys of our line, though a [sic] any in the East keeps trying to sell me on the idea, apparently that Baileys should help them make money.

     It was them [?} that got me more or less straightened out on the Deacon Bailey line and now I correspond with Effie Bailey of Belfast and Loren Haskell whose father was Wm. Haskell and his son is Wm. Haskell of Rowayton, Conn and owns the largest sailing school in the U.S.A. I suppose you know about the Haskell line. Loren is younger than I and lives in Oxford, Me. and has a couple of articles in DOWN EAST, one this past month.

    Where is your sister now and what is she up to? There are scores and scores of Baileys all over the landscape out here and that is what caused me to rename myself from Arthur to Cartland A. Bailey or A. Cartland. So many Arthurs that it got to be bothersome so for 34 years now I have been known as Cartland and only those who knew when in Maine or Iowa know me as Arthur. The President of the San Diego Chamber of Commerce was Elwood Bailey. So he said were cousins I guess. It would be very interesting to trace out the Baileys from England. Do you know anything about them. Is John Bailey, the Democratic Chairman any relation to the John Baileys who were Deacon Bailey’s father and grandfather? Maybe your mother knew something of our ancestry that I haven’t dug out yet.

     We like California very much, in spite of mornings when there is frost on the roofs. We are in a rather cold spot in this Hidden Valley and the cold air slides down and discourages banana plants though the tree keep growing when warm weather comes. Now is the time when it begins to get hot...in spots. 82 here yesterday but today we are under a sky full of “high fog”. I’ve just been reading of the storm in Mass.

    Here it is Monday and I started this Saturday. Guess I should fold it and get it off. Had a phone call from Maine last night about 9:00 by their time 6:00 by ours and I was listening to T.V. Meet the Press. Lucy, Ruth and Marian all talked. Guess Marian was at Lucy’s over the weekend. Maybe over Memorial Day. Just had a few words from each of them but it was good to hear their voices reproduced at this end of the line. Lucy is now 87 and sounds as young as ever. She said they had just been to Bailey Island. For my 80th birthday they sent me from Bailey I. a package of Chocolates, Kennebec Spruce gum, Bailey Island soap, fir needles and maple sugar Indians. Maybe you haven’t these Cartland cousins. I have several of them out here up and down the coast which I seldom or never see. The family seems scattered as though hit by a bird shot blast. They are all over the map.

     If you ever have time to write I would be glad to hear from you girls. Penn Bulletin spoke of your daughter. How many children do you have? What work is your husband lined up with? I seem to know practically nothing about you Wood girls. I saw you once in ’32 when Martha Berry [?] and I drove up from Oskaloosa one morning. That was the only time I saw aunt Edith and uncle Herbert since I left Maine in ’06. I think it was more their influence than anyone’s that influenced me to Bates for that one year and then I was pulled to Penn by Susan Berry Sisson, my mother’s double first cousin. Didn’t take much pulling though after she talked my mother into it. I’ve never been sorry I went, though so far as my interests were concerned it would have been better if I had gone to Maine University for there was little in science outside of Chemistry at Penn, and that was rather a weak affair. So after teaching several years at Quaker Academies and running behind financially I went into public school work and then to Iowa State U. where some real Physics was available.

      Tell me something of yourselves so I won’t be so ignorant about my relatives !

                      Love to you all,

                          Arthur

                          A. Cartland Bailey