Today I got to continue with the Old Vault Letters collection and worked on the same set Elaine did back in November: MSS113-
b01f02-02
b01f06-02
b01f09-01
b01f10-01
There was not too much difficulty with this batch even though the letters certainly had a lot of legalese and
jargon (enough to make you a little dizzy).
In our second letter, I made a guess that the word “said” got abbreviated to an s
and d, written like this - “sd”
 |
| “sd slave” |
I don’t know how to verify that but it makes sense within the context
of the letter.
The condition of the third letter was quite good. The handwriting
was straight and crisp and it looked like it had been written recently rather
than back in 1836.
The last letter was written in 1839 by Mirabeau Lamar, the President of the Republic of Texas. He was nominating two men to political positions. There was a curious phrase that must be in reference to voting on nominees. One nominee was unanimously
confirmed but the other one, Bee, got “laid on
the table”.
 |
| Bee laid on the table [?] |
Seems like it all worked out
for Mr. Bee. A little research
revealed that Bernard Elliot Bee later served as the Republic's Secretary of State in 1839. Bee County
and the city of Beeville were named in his honor.
No comments:
Post a Comment