Old Vault Letters, Elaine Patton, 10/22/2012

Today's letters: MS113-
... b01f04-01,
... b01f05-01, &
... b01f06-01.

B01f04-01 is tricky. Thin paper = bleed-through of text from the other side of the page. The handwriting isn't super messy, but there were a number of words I couldn't parse. A little research on March 1836 vis-a-vis the Texas Revolution helped elucidate some names and hopefully some of the artillery types (e.g. grape and canister shot, maybe) being requested. This is the letter behind this sentence of a short biography of William T. Austin: On March 14, 1836, Sam Houston appointed Austin his aide-de-camp with the rank of major and ordered him to Columbia to requisition artillery and horses for the army.

 Ps are shaped similarly to Houston's style with the superfluous ascender rising above the bowl of the p.

[aid][sic] de camp

It seems to be very consistent throughout the letter with no similarly-shaped non-p letters, which can provide some hints in more difficult words. For example:

proceed

 There are a couple of instances where it seems a word beginning with S uses a different form than other Ss.

shells

same

And just for comparison, three different words that are all very similarly written (hooray for context):

war, river, near

 B01f05-01 is mostly pretty clearly written; only a few uncertainties.

B01f06-01 is just a short scrap of paper, but it is not legible (at least, not to me). The pen must have been leaky, because there are ink blots all over blurring the shapes of letters or outright obscuring them. I could not even get 10% figured out. Something involving a mortgage...? The folder description is Slavery: Legal Documents, 1796-1863, which doesn't really help.

"Scribble scribble blob blob 8th 1789 scribblob."