Beverly Randolph Johnston to Eliza Mary Johnston, October 2, 1846

[Beverly Randolph Johnston at Barboursville, Virginia, to Eliza Mary Johnston at Abingdon (“mail via Staunton”), October 2, 1846. Box 25, Folder 1, Robert Morton Hughes Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, Patricia W. and J. Douglas Perry Library, Old Dominion University Libraries, Norfolk, VA 23529. This is my rough transcription. Additional paragraph break added for easier reading.]

Barboursville Oct 2^nd 1846

My Dear Lizzie

I have been here for almost a week, trying a case about some of your land for the last 3 ½ days/ It is unfinished and will consume the rest of the week. There is yet another, probably not less tedious. We may not try it, however, at this term.

I have made a very good sale of a part of your land, 800 acres for $4000. I am on treaty for the sale of the rest. If I can sell it for 8, or $9000 I will do so. For the interest of the money will be three times as much as the rents, and the rascality with which these piratical people, called tenants, and almost all others (with a few honourable exceptions) prey upon absentees is almost beyond conception. I thirst to be rid of them.

The sale made is chiefly on credit, but bears interest from 1^st December next. I give possession 1^st January and have the best man in the country as security. This is all I can say.

                                                        Yours most affectionately

                                                                  B.R. Johnston

[Bev. R. Johnston = Beverly Randolph Johnston (1803-1876)

Lizzie = Eliza Mary Johnston (1825-1909)
$1 in 1846 = about $30 in early 2017.]

[Many thanks to Sue Davis, William Myers, Mary Davy and Sally Young for their ongoing research collaboration.]