The note has not been found. Wallis and Louisa A’hmuty Nash had lived in Down during the 1870s, before emigrating to Oregon in 1879. Mary Desborough, Louisa’s widowed mother, had also lived in Down. The source of the false report has not been identified, but apparently reached Down on 6 October 1879 (letter from Emma Darwin to Ida Farrer, [6 October 1879] (DAR 258: 651)). In his book Two years in Oregon (Nash 1882, p. 100), Wallis Nash refers to ‘a sharp attack of illness’ in the autumn of 1879. Nash wrote a memoir of the Darwins as his neighbours in Down in Nash 1919, chapter 14.