"those were happier days than we knew then"

Farming was going well for the Hendersons in the summer of 1912 when Caroline wrote this letter to Rose: "On the whole this has been the most favorable season we have seen here." She goes on to describe the multitude of crops in the fields and in their garden, as well as the chickens and the turkeys ("132 young ones") that she is raising. Events beginning in the fall of 1912 would change her tone as a prolonged dry spell began that September.

Caroline and Will's only child, a daughter, Sarah Eleanor was two-years old at the time this letter was written. Caroline mentions to Rose that she has a neighbor who farmed while caring for her growing family of several children under the age of five. "I shouldn't know how to do it," she writes to Rose, "as perhaps the 'higher education' in which I suppose we shared, really does unfit one for domestic life. But those were happier days than we knew then and I am glad we had them and that you were there."