Jun 27, 2024 - Sale 2675

Sale 2675 - Lot 263

Price Realized: $ 2,375
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
(SLAVERY & ABOLITION.) Elizabeth Hyrne. An early South Carolina colonist requests her inheritance so she can buy "six stout Negroe men." Autograph Letter Signed to brother Burrell Masingberd "at Mr. Christopher Fowler's, merch't," in London, "via Lisbon, Capt. Burnabie." One (of two?) pages, 12 x 7¾ inches, with address panel and docketing on verso; apparently lacking an initial leaf, seal tear affecting text, minor foxing, mailing folds. With full typed transcript. [Charleston, SC], 29 May 1705
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"With six stout Negroe men & a good overseer we could make one hundred barr'll of tar a month."

The author of this letter was Elizabeth Cornelia Massingberd Hyrne (1674–1744), born into a prosperous English family. In 1697, she married Edward Hyrne (1670-1723), an unsuccessful businessman who had "misapplied" some money collected for the Crown. He took his young bride to the new settlement in South Carolina to improve his fortunes. Elizabeth was due a substantial inheritance from her father, but by the terms of the will, she was not to receive it until the age of 25.

In this letter, Elizabeth implores her London brother to approve sending funds sooner than the 1709 inheritance date, describing the big plan she had hatched with her husband: buying enough slaves to harvest tar and pitch from their tract of pine land. In part:

"We may live happily in the world as certainly with God's blessing we may in this our most advantageous settlement. If you will take care speedily to send over effects to pay for it, and to purchas a competent number of slaves with, but which there is nothing to be done in order to which I desier you not to fail to send over five hundred pound in goods well bought by the next vessell bound derectly hither. . . . My husband has not had time fully as yet to inform himself of the pertucular sorts of goods he would have sent, but will speedily. . . . My husband is willing to give you any such discharge as you desire or think fitt so that you need not scrupole the paym't of this mony, for the remainder in your hands will be sufficient security. . . . By this you will see how great an injurey it will do me to have my fortuin paid into the chancery. . . . 500 well laid out in England will be near 1000 here if not quite, so that I hope that will near do to settle us here in a comfortable being, which is more then all will do in England, & with 500 more may buy us as many slaves as humanly speaking would soon rais us an estate in tar & pitch alone, for which commodities scarce any tract of land in the whole settlement is so good as ours of like quantity of acres. . . . With six stout Negroe men & a good overseer we could make one hundred barr'll of tar a month; with twelve, two hundred barrells, & so in proportion, by w'ch in appears that the more mony is laid out in slaves, the sooner our estate will be raised, & as we have wood enough on our land to make ten thousand barr'll of tar, so that I leave it to you to judge whether it be not better to send my fortune hither where it can be so highly improved to our benifit that to keep it there to no purpose but only because it may be suggested by some (either through ignorance or mallice) that it will be more to my advantage, which I can in no wise see, for my husband is very free it should be firmly settled upon me & mine is all at present."