This letter was written on December 17, 1858 by one of the children (I assume a daughter) to a “Mary” and details the death of Christopher Cranston, Charles Edward Cranston and Josephine Park Cranston’s father and Chris (Doc) Cranston’s grandfather.

He died of internal injuries suffered in a fall from the loft in his barn one morning shortly after breakfast.  He was brought into the house, regained consciousness, had bruises and a broken shoulder and seemed to have suffered greatly.  The attending doctors who were called to the home “bled him” – to no avail.

~ CC

This is the hardest of all the letters to read, not for the hand—which is clear—but for what it tells. It’s the account of Christopher Cranston’s death, written by his daughter.

Here’s the transcription.

_____________________

Rush Tp., Dec. 17th 1858.
Dear Mary,
Weeks have passed by since I in haste wrote a few lines; in the meantime I have recd. two letters from you. I designed to write you before this the particulars of my Father’s death, but it is a sorrowful task from which I have hitherto shrunk from undertaking. You have probably seen a notice of the accident which caused his death, in the paper which Charles sent you. How it occurred we do not know, certainly; but suppose that he fell from the highest beams of the barn-loft, across which some boards had been placed, over the large door in front. He probably had gone up to get one of the boards down to repair a place in the floor below, in which there was a board broken, over which the horses had to be led to and from their stalls. This much is conjecture. At breakfast that morning the family had sat long in conversation at the breakfast table, and Pa had seemed in better spirits than usual; after which he said he would finish the chores at the barn, and had been gone but a few minutes when Kittie and Louie, who had gone to the buggy house, heard a noise of something falling and ran to the front part of the barn, and there lay Pa on the floor, and a board not far from him; he was lying on his back, blood oozing from his mouth and nose. Kittie raised up his head and let the blood run from his mouth, while Louie ran and called for help. They went immediately from the house, and carried Pa in and placed him on the lounge. At first he seemed stunned and motionless, but as soon as his head was moved and the blood freed from his mouth he seemed conscious of great pain and groaned in great agony. He asked questions of those around him, as “What is the matter?” and “How did I get hurt?” And seemed entirely unconscious of the cause of his sufferings. He was very sick at times and vomited frequently; much fresh blood seemed to be thrown from his stomache. He complained of his left shoulder’s being very painful; of his head’s being very hot and acheing, and his feet being extremely cold. All of which convinces me that he was conscious of his extreme suffering, though confused as to the cause, and extent of his injuries. Physicians had been immediately sent for; when they arrived he extended his hand in glad recognition to one of them and called him by name. They examined him carefully, and found only a small bruise on his head, and a slight fracture of the shoulder-blade, but they were convinced that he was injured more than external appearances indicated, and had but little hope of benefiting him; They bled him, but it was a most painful opperation to him, for he suffered so much from the position in which he had to be held, and entreated them to lay him down for he could not endure it. As soon as possible they layed him down, and as his pulse seemed rapidly to sink they gave him some stimulating draught, and finally succeeded in getting him warmed up, a perspiration started and he seemed to fall into a deep sleep, from which he could not afterward be aroused. He was bled about noon, after which he did not speak, and his groans subsided to a deep and heavy breathing, which continued to the last.

_____________

This letter sits at the painful center of your whole collection, and it resolves several threads at once.
The writer is Josephine. Though unsigned in the pages you’ve shown (there may be a continuation), the hand, the diction, and above all the situation match Josephine P. Cranston exactly. She writes from Rush Township on December 17, 1858, to “Dear Mary”—and addresses the dead man as “my Father” and “Pa.” This is Christopher Cranston’s daughter writing the account of his death. The “Mary” here is almost certainly the same “Sister Mary” to whom William Wallace Cranston wrote from Kansas in 1907: a Cranston sister living back in or near Woodstock/Rush Township. That makes Josephine and William Wallace siblings, both children of Christopher—and Mary their sister.
This is the death of Christopher Cranston, the “C. Cranston” who wrote the anxious 1843 letter to Josephine in Cincinnati, the son of John Cranston the 1815 pioneer, the man who attended Woodward High School with his sister Phebe Ann. He died of internal injuries after a fall from the barn loft in December 1858—conscious, in agony, asking “What is the matter? How did I get hurt?”—bled by the physicians (a standard but, here, futile and cruel treatment), and slipping into the final sleep by noon. The detail that he had been “in better spirits than usual” at a long, talkative family breakfast that very morning gives the account its terrible ordinary-day weight.
New family names surface: Kittie and Louie, who found him in the barn—younger siblings or relatives of Josephine, very likely two more of Christopher’s children (the “children all talking about you” from the 1843 letter, now grown). And Charles, who had sent Mary the newspaper notice of the accident—almost certainly another brother. So Christopher’s children now include, by name across your letters: Josephine, Mary, Charles, Kittie, Louie, and—if the 1907 letter’s “Your Bro” is also Christopher’s son—William Wallace. That is a substantial sibling group to anchor the next generation of the chart.
It also dates and explains the 1843 letter’s anxiety in retrospect. Fifteen years before this, Christopher had written to Josephine fretting that he could not “consent to your roving all over the world.” Now Josephine is the one composing his death narrative—the dutiful daughter who came home. And it connects forward: when she wrote in 1874 of “copying genealogical items for my uncle John Cranston of Woodstock,” she was already, by then, the family member who recorded and preserved. This 1858 letter is her earliest surviving act of that role—recording a death rather than a lineage, but in the same careful, unflinching hand.
The medical realism here is striking and historically valuable: the symptoms she records—fresh blood vomited from the stomach, the cold feet, the sinking pulse, the brief rally after stimulants, the deep unrousable sleep—describe massive internal hemorrhage from blunt trauma, almost certainly a ruptured spleen or liver. Her observation that “he was injured more than external appearances indicated” was exactly right, and beyond what 1858 frontier medicine could touch.
This now gives you a remarkably complete arc for Christopher Cranston: born in Rhode Island, emigrated as a boy with his father in 1815 (the pioneer narrative), schooled in Cincinnati, settled in Rush Township, wrote as an anxious father in 1843, and died in his own barn in 1858—his daughter Josephine recording it, his other children scattered from the Ohio homeplace to (eventually) Kansas.
I’ll flag one thing to check against the pages you have: this letter may continue beyond Page 3 (it ends “continued to the last”—a natural place for a following page with the death, funeral, and signature). If there’s another leaf, it likely carries Josephine’s signature and possibly the date and place of burial.