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Mary Child was Martha Schofield's mother. She is concerned that Schofield is overworking herself while trying to get a schoolhouse built on her lot of land, running her school, and helping her former students. She discusses attending Quarterly Meeting and shares that Lucy Bunting, John Bunting's mother, has been taken to Frankford Asylum after multiple suicide attempts. She briefly discusses Schofield's former student Lawrence Obanyon Posey, and expresses hope that the legislature will abolish capital punishment.

Joseph Fussell was Graceanna Lewis' cousin. Offers to lend books to Lewis; describes the value of good books and the role of reading in (Quaker) life. Relates that he wrote to Dr. Pliny Earle about patients in the asylum whose diseases the physicians said were "anxiety about religion." Describes Earle's response, the shapes of the patients' skulls, and phrenology and its relationship to fatalism.