Letter not dated, postmark 12/4/1909, Chatanika, Alaska

Miss Gladys Bower, Seattle, Wn

My Dear Daughter Gladys;

I have been looking for a letter from you for such a long time and still there is none course I received your New Year's card and am very thankful for the same but sorrow I never get a letters from you. I wrote you last October and have not as yet received an answer to that letter have been looking for an answer in every mail but none comes so I will try again I would write to you before this but I am awful busy I have to work 12 hours a day and Sundays as well today is the first Sunday I have had this year. I have charge of all the machinery that is why my hrs are so long. The work is not so hard as in the drifts in the winter but it requires all a persons time for I have to do the repairing after working hours. We had some awful cold weather here this winter. 68 degrees below zero but it is fine now I seen by the paper it was very cold in Seattle this Winter. I have seven partners this winter. Six of them are Swede boys and one is an Englishman we call the Company The Tillecum Mining Co. we have lay a claim down the creek from where we are working now 3 has gone down to sink a shaft to bedrock there if we work there this summer I don't think I can come out to see you for we will have to pump water all the time so we will have to work all the time How would you like to come in here and spend the summer with me if I cannot come out to see you I should like very much to have you come and spend the summer with me at least. My partners would like to see you also they told me to be sure and give you their best regards. I sent you $10 in the last letter I wrote to you did you get it I do wish I could hear from you regarding some of the letters I wrote to you have gone to the dead letter office and come back to me so I don't know if you get my letters or not so do write to me and tell me if you should like to come to see me this summer so if I cannot come out to see you I will send you the money to make the trip with. Tell me all about your Aunt Lucy, Gertrude, Henry, Lewis and all the folks and tell me all about yourself for you don't know how anxious I am about you and how I long to see and be with you. Tell me if you are going to school next time I will try and write you a long letter so do answer this one soon

From your Loving Father B. J. Bower

Address to Cleary City, Fairbanks District, Alaska