This letter is a significant document and recitation of the beliefs Job Otis held as a Quaker.  His writing is clear that he doubts the positions held by others.  His letter is to Thomas Gould, a minster and member of the Quaker hierarchy. See below the information that both became followers of John Wilbur, who broke away from the main body of the Quakers to form his own sect.  The letter has a water stain that makes reading some parts difficult, but the penmanship is good and with some effort, the entire letter is readable. 

Also significant is the Sherwood Corners New York postmark.  This mark is among the rarest listed in the American Stampless Cover Catalog with a 1997 price of $500.  The mark on this letter is full and strong.  It is one of the few, if not only, stencil stampless postmarks.

The letter opens with the mention that William and Sarah Mekeel have returned from their visit to the west. Initial research indicates the Mekeels were Quaker leaders from Westerly, Rhode Island.

“…of this be assured, that I do very dearly love the cause of truth, as well as the truth itself and all those who are possibly and rightly engaged into its support and procreation. Truly I love all such, as myself, accounting them as my neighbors in the gospel – as my brethren and sisters, in the nearest relationships. And this is not a new thing with me; but has been much so from early life.  My spirit daily breathes peace on earth and good will to men even to the rebellious and to those who are in the enmity towards me for the seeds (sic) sake. And, I often think I should be willing and even glad, were it more in my power, whether actively or passively to do much more for the furtherance of the gospel than has hitherto fallen to my lot, or that I have gifts and qualifications for. I daily lament and mourn over the great delection, the sorrowful backsliding, the shipwreck which many of fair promise have made of later time...”  “…those who are in the delusion of the day, appear to grow blinder and blinder and increasingly disposed to change all the wrong, even the delusion itself, upon some Friends, who stand in the way of their wild cancer. They evidently feel, sensibly so, the weight of their spirits and of their stable walking as a heavy load upon them which they cannot well divert themselves of; neither are they wholly  divested of a certain fearful looking for of what may yet come after. In short, is common with those who have lost a good estate and gotten far out of the way they change others with what properly belongs to themselves.”

– From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - Job and Deborah Otis House, also known as East Otis Farm, is a historic home located at Sherwood in Cayuga County, New York. It is a Federal-style dwelling built in 1815. It consists of a 2-story, three-bay, side-hall main block with a 1¹⁄₂-story side ell. Also on the property is a mid- to late-19th-century barn. During the 1840s the dwelling was home to Job and Deborah Otis, who were Orthodox Quakers and leaders of the Otisites. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2008.

 – From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - John Wilbur (July 17, 1774 – May 1, 1856) was a prominent American Quaker minister and religious thinker who was at the forefront of a controversy that led to "the second split" in the Religious Society of Friends in the United States. Wilbur was born to Quaker parents in Hopkinton, Rhode Island. Wilbur was recognized as an Elder in 1802 and acknowledged as a minister in 1812. Always intellectually inclined, Wilbur was the teacher of the local Friends school for many years. In 1822, Wilbur was appointed to an important committee of New England Friends to investigate the "new light" movement in Lynn, Massachusetts. He made a handful of travels in the ministry, for which he became known as an exponent of traditional Quakerism. In 1831, Wilbur went on his first trip to England and encountered a growing Evangelical thrust among the Friends there, which made him uneasy. Friends had already come through a schism a few years earlier involving Elias Hicks, who was disowned and started a new branch of Quakerism. Hicks had been teaching doctrines that are regarded as heretical by mainstream Christianity, basing his views on personal revelations from God. During this British trip, Wilbur wrote a series of letters to George Crossfield; these letters were well-received statements of Quaker doctrine and have been in print continuously since that time. The main body of Friends were called Orthodox because they had remained orthodox in terms of Christianity. But now Wilbur believed that some Orthodox Friends, especially those in England, were so alarmed about Hicks's perceived heterodoxy that they had gone too far in the other direction. He saw that this group of Friends was abandoning the traditional Friends practice of following God’s immediate, inward guidance in favor of using their own reason to interpret and follow the Bible. They were stressing a cold intellectual acceptance of the Bible instead of a vital, direct experience of the Holy Spirit in one's heart. Wilbur quoted early Friends, such as Robert Barclay, William Penn, and George Fox to make his case that the traditional view of Friends was that the inward light takes priority over the text of the Bible. At the same time, he agreed that the Bible was inspired by God and was useful as a guide, as had the early Friends.

Wilbur returned to the United States in 1833. He became embroiled in a dispute with Joseph John Gurney, a Quaker minister from England who was speaking throughout the United States. Gurney had been heavily involved in the drafting of the London Yearly Meeting's epistle in 1836. In that epistle Friends in England officially voiced their adoption of the more Evangelical views that Wilbur had encountered and disapproved. During Gurney's sojourn in the United States, Wilbur made private comments against Gurney's views to some of his associates in New England Yearly Meeting (which encompassed Friends in the eastern 80% of New England) and acquaintances in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. In 1838 some members of New England Yearly Meeting accused Wilbur of making derogatory statements against Gurney in violation of the principle of handling conflicts by going through the proper channels. They ordered South Kingston Monthly Meeting (local body he belonged to) to discipline him, but the local Friends supported Wilbur. Then the Rhode Island Quarterly Meeting (an intermediary group) laid down (dissolved) the South Kingston Monthly Meeting and attached its members to the Greenwich Monthly Meeting. The latter meeting disowned Wilbur in 1843. This disownment was confirmed by his quarterly meeting and then by the yearly meeting as well. Wilbur continued in the Friends movement with the support of many like-minded members. In 1845, a division took place in New England over the unusual treatment of Wilbur and his supporters. The smaller body, comprising about five hundred members, came to be called the "Wilburites" for their support of John Wilbur. The larger body came to be called the "Gurneyites" for their support of Joseph J. Gurney. In succeeding years, other yearly meetings divided: New York in 1846 and Ohio, Indiana, and Baltimore in 1854. The Wilburite Friends later entered into fellowship with a branch called the Conservative Friends. Wilbur made a second journey to England in 1853-1854. He died in 1856, the same year that two other leading Wilburite Quakers died (Thomas B. Gould and Job Otis).

Thomas B. Gould - Thomas B. Gould (1813-1856) was a minister in the “Wilburite” New England Yearly Meeting, and served for many years as clerk of the Yearly Meeting. Though he left no journal, selections from his writings were collected after his death by William Hodgson. The story of Quakerism in Nantucket has a pathetic interest; its rise and fall was in every sense remarkable. In about 1800 the Society was at the flood-tide of its development. A large meeting house erected in 1730 stood on the corner of Main and Saratoga Streets, and this was used for sixty years, when a new building was planned on Broad Street, and the old meeting house re-built on Main Street.

The majority of Friends in Nantucket joined the Wilburites. When the Wilburites reached Newport they bent all their endeavors to secure the appointment of Thomas B. Gould of Newport as clerk; but the clerk of the previous year, a Gurneyite, according to the rule, was obliged to preside at the new meeting. He found that it was the "Sense of the meeting," that he "should continue for another year," so he made a minute to that effect; and soon found that it was the "sense of the meeting" that the Wilburites were to receive no encouragement. The Gurney faction gradually faded away in Nantucket until the year 1867 when it was a memory, and the property was handed over to the New Bedford Monthly Meeting, a pathetic consummation of fruitless endeavor. The Wilburites, at the separation of 1845, denounced the Gurneyites as "spurious" and the meeting proceeded to disown all the Gurneyites. Aside from the Hicksite, Wilburite and Gurneyite factions there were further potentialities and fatalities which weakened the sect, as the Job Otis and Joseph Hoag controversy, a non-essential that hastened the end in Nantucket.

The controversy occurred in the Central New York Meeting at Scipio in relation to a publication by that meeting of the journal of Joseph Hoag. In the original work Hoag had made some remarks derogatory to the temper and judgment of Job Otis, who lived in New Bedford during the early part of this century, and then moved to Scipio and continued to be one of the strictest of American Friends. He was highly respected by those whose censorious tastes inclined them toward a rigid and severe discipline. Hoag was a Quaker minister of great fame, whose views were not unlike those of Otis, but whose temper and judgment were much more pacific. In 1858 the Scipio Yearly Meeting decided to publish the journal, and the matter was left to a committee. The friends of the Otis family desired to omit the criticism of Job Otis. The other members of the committee thought it best to publish the book with no omissions. These two parties separated in 1859, and each party constituted a separate Yearly Meeting, the one with James Otis as clerk commonly known as the Otis Meeting, and the other with John King as clerk commonly called the King Meeting. - Quakerism on Nantucket Since 1800, Volume 1, Issue 2 – By Henry Barnard Worth