The following items are excerpted from the Mackey’s Ferry Letter column:

• Mr. Winfield SPRUILL’s little boy has his thigh bone broken while picking up potatoes under the cart last Saturday morning.  The cart dumped on him and caused his misfortune.
• The Rev. R.B. COLLIER was on time to fill his appointment at Frasier’s School House yesterday, the second Sunday. He preached, as usual, with great power, to a very respectable congregation.  His text was very appropriate : “The barrel of meal wasteth not.”  He set forth the unquestionable facts that if we would trust God, though there might be even a famine for three years and six months, that the children of God would be cared for.  He also inferred from the text a lesson of self-denial, showing how the poor widow woman was blessed for her willingness to share the last morsel with the old prophet Elijah.
• There was three new comers in the neighborhood recently, W.S. DAVENPORT, J.A.S. DAVENPORT, and W.R. BASNIGHT are the lucky men.  Children born in these days will probably be tough.
• Mr. Wiggins CLAGON is having his nets repaired for fishing.
• Mr. L.C. MARRINER has run a part of the walling around his two-acre lot at the Ferry and will begin his house in a few days.  He has built one small tenant house for his watchman and is building a drying house to store his lumber.

Source: Roanoke Beacon, 13 December 1889. Available online at DigitalNC.org