(WEST TEXAS) Three letters by a Virginian settler in Texas

Sale 2580 - Lot 274

Price Realized: $ 469

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

Estimate: $ 300 - $ 400

(WEST--TEXAS.) Three letters by a Virginian settler in Texas shortly after the war. Autograph Letters Signed to unnamed sister and mother near Middleburg, VA. 10 total pages, various sizes, minor wear and foxing. Various places, February to July 1867

Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

The first of these letters is written from Washington, awaiting his ocean liner to New Orleans. Later in February 1867, he reports on his arrival in Houston: "I am very much pleased with this town, would like to live here if I could get in any business," but he notes that in February "it is as warm as June in Virginia," and he has not seen any pretty ladies since leaving Virginia: "I think they are scarce in Texas or keep themselves very close." On 29 July 1867, he writes from Anderson in Grimes County, further inland, again noting the heat: "There are few white men who work here this time of year, & those that do work go out about sun up in morning & work till 9 o'clock & then lay by until four in the evening before they go out again." He considered going into sheep: "it will be three or four years before you can realize anything, but when your money does begin to come in, it all comes at once."

The author of these letters is tough to identify. He signs variously as "Joe" or "J.M. Chan"[?]. He is clearly from the Middleburg area of Loudoun County, VA. At one point he jokes that at the local Middleburg picnic dances, "Rush can take my place on the floor now." The only Rush we find in Loudoun County in 1860 was a Rush Wallace living with the extended Chancellor family, next door to a Joseph Mason, aged 12, living in the home of wealthy lawyer Lorman Chancellor. An adopted son, perhaps?