From: Petrel, Adams County, ND
22 January 1917
Worthy Staats-Anzeiger!
It is not necessary to write about the weather, since it is here like it is everywhere in North Dakota. But the status of health here cannot be praised.
My father has suffered for a long time already. He was under doctor’s care for five weeks at a hospital in Rochester, Minnesota. He was home again for three weeks, but this week he will travel again to Rochester. There he will have to undergo surgery because of a bladder ailment. The doctors maintain that he has a tumor in the bladder. Mrs. Simon Kopp, who has also been bedridden for five weeks, will go along with my father to Rochester. She believes that there she can regain her health. Besides the ones mentioned there are many others who are sick in our area.
I would like to inform the editorship that for three months now I have received the newspaper very irregularly. When the Staats-Anzeiger is amiss then everything else is amiss. I have talked to the post office mistress already, but she wouldn’t even listen to me. (*Editor: The newspaper leaves from here punctually every Tuesday and Friday, so that the blame should not hit us whenever irregularities occur. Please talk to the post office mistress once more. If again she does not pay attention to you, then let her know that there are others who are in a position above hers. This will work in most cases with careless postmasters.)
I paid for my newspaper in June of last summer and not taken a prize because I wanted a calendar. If you should have some, then please send me one. (*Editor: Last year we sent you the Jahresboten (Year’s Messenger) Calendar for 1916 as a prize, and we believe that this matter is in order.)
I love to read the Staats-Anzeiger, and of all the newspapers I like it the best. In closing I greet all my friends as well as the editorship and the readers of this paper.
Jos. [Joseph] Erker