(CALIFORNIA) Hall John Group of two letters from a miner on

Sale 2380 - Lot 70

Price Realized: $ 1,625

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 500 - $ 750

(CALIFORNIA.) Hall, John. Group of two letters from a miner on the trail west, and one from his mining camp. 3 Autograph Letters Signed to Ehud Webb of New Buffalo, MI, apparently an old friend from Indiana; minor foxing, clean and legible although the author is not much for spelling. Vp, 1849-51

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The first two letters are written on the overland route to California in early 1849, the first from St. Louis ("Thare is a grate manney Callifornia emmigrantes here, there is chollery here, twenty seven cases died with it laste week"). The second was written on the banks of the Platte River somewhere in Nebraska: "Wee are in advance of the emigrats, the most of them, there is about one hundred wagons ahead of us, there is buffalo here by the tenn thousand." He describes a member of his party being badly injured by an angry buffalo. The final letter is dated Lewisville, El Dorado County, CA (now Greenville, between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe), 21 February 1851. It is written on a letter sheet with an engraving of San Francisco by J. Clark. Hall apologizes for not sending the promised money, but he has just purchased some hogs with "all the gold that I could spare, tho expecting every day that I should get some in," and has also lent $250 to an old acquaintance named Rambo who seems to have disappeared. He announces his plans to "mine this summer on the Midel Fork, the season is agoing to be very faverable for river diginges."