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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume II, Issue 12, 15 January 1867, Page 3

Among the strangers in Philadelphia at this moment (says the Philadelphia North American) are two ladies from Martinsburg, West Virginia. They were lately purchasing a seed drill, a mowing-machine and other agricultural implements, whose cost in the aggregate was about 800 dollars. Their home was very close to the theatre of the late war. Betweeu the two contending armies their houses aud barns were burnt, their horses and cattle driven off, their only brother conscripted into the Southern army, and themselves left utterly destitute and homeless. Anyone who, seeing a young lady such as we saw, had been told that she had personally ploughed and planted mauy acres of land would have laughed to scorn the party so informing hira. Such, however, is literally the case. We learnt the facts frcm a gentleman residing in the vicinity. The smoking ruins of the farm upon which these young people resided had scarcely cooled when the neighbors clubbed together, built them a loghouse, and extemporised a sort of barn. Horses were loaned to them, and the girls with their own hands ploughed the ground and seeded it with corn. The crop grew apace, and with their own hands they harvested it. They sold it to great advantage. They had owned forty-seven negro slaves. Some of these went into the Union army others deserted the locality. The girls were left alone to baffle with the vicisitudes of the war. Our informant, whose respectability is beyond a question, says thatthese girls produced by their own work in the field more decided and productive results than were accomplished by the entire gang of slaves. They toiled for three years, and now they have a comfortable home and most substantial barns upon their property, while improvements have been made upon it to an extent that makes it of considerably more value than before the torch of conflicting armies reduced its building to ashes. One of the young ladies has since married; but the others still do duty as theirown "overseers, and they themselves purchased recently and directed the shipment of the agricultural implements to which we have above referred. The wonder to the dealer was that a lady, delicately gloved and attired

as though she had never overstepped the bounds of the boudoir, should':descant experimentally and intelligently upon the respective merits of the different reapingI machines, aud upon the comparative values of the different patents for thrashing out the cereals. These young ladies were educated in Philadelphia, and are well known to many of our best people.