My all but ruined child,

I yesterday was informed and today the report was confirmed, that recently in Montreal a case of marriage with a deceased wife's sister was tried before Judge Day. It was [a case?] of considerable interest as large property was depending. The learned Judge decided that the Law of The Land was the Law in Canada consequently the marriage was illegal and the children being thereby illegitimate could not inherit.

My dear Mary, you are on the brink of a precipice--a step and you are gone. May God in his mercy save you from irretrievable ruin fervently prays

Your unhappy Father

Thomas Baker

¹ James Alfred Baker is Mary Ann's brother and one of the seven children of Rev. Thomas Baker and Sarah Hampson Baker (d. 1847). Mary Ann was being courted by Frederick F. Wilkes, the husband of her dead sister Harriett, who died in childbirth in 1847. Mary Anne did marry Wilkes and was estranged from her father as a result. She died in 1850 in childbirth just as her sister did. See W2855 for details.