Sep 26, 2019 - Sale 2517

Sale 2517 - Lot 211

Price Realized: $ 3,250
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,200 - $ 1,800
(TEXAS.) Pollard, H. Letter describing life at an Irish Catholic settlement before Texan independence. Autograph Letter Signed to Franklin Whiting of New York City. 2 pages, 13 x 8 inches, with address panel on verso (no postal markings); several closed tears and 1-inch hole in address panel. With typed transcript. San Patricio, TX, 29 October 1834

Additional Details

San Patricio, TX attracted a colony of Irish-American settlers in the years before independence. This author, who signs only as "H. Pollard," explains that he is "in feeble health" and "travelling for the recovery of my health and to view the country," adding that he had recently received a letter "informing me of the death of my wife." He is enthusiastic about the land: "If this country were known, it would soon populated, for richness of soil it cannot be excelled and the rolling hilly parts are probably as healthy as any part of the known world. All people of delicate lungs ought to visit this region as consumption is not known here. Tejas is about becoming a separate state of Mejico which will doubtlessly increase migration and raise the price of land. Now is the time to speculate. By a recent law, a settler has a right to sell his land whenever she chooses."