, Letter, , New York Co., NY, to JS, , Hancock Co., IL, 18 Aug. 1841; handwriting of ; two pages; BYU. Includes address, postal stamps, postal notations, and docket.
Bifolium measuring 9⅞ × 7¾ inches (25 × 20 cm) and ruled with twenty-eight horizontal blue lines that are now faded. An embossed logo for a paper mill appears in the top left corner of the first page and reads “Southworth Co., Springfield”. The letter was written on the recto and verso of the first leaf. The bifolium was trifolded twice in letter style, addressed, and sealed with a red adhesive wafer. The second leaf was torn, likely when the letter was opened. The letter was later folded for filing.
A docket in the handwriting of , who served in a clerical capacity for JS from 1841 to 1842, appears on the verso of the second leaf. The first page is torn along the top horizontal fold. According to a notation on a photocopy of this document, the letter was acquired at an auction in 1964 by Brigham Young University, where it remains as part of the L. Tom Perry Special Collections.
Fullmer, John S. Letterbook, 1836–1881. John S. Fullmer Journal and Letterbook, 1836–1881. CHL.
Historical Introduction
wrote this letter to JS on 18 August 1841 in regarding his intention to buy land near , Illinois. The letter followed up on a previous communication Bernhisel sent to JS on this same subject. In that earlier letter, Bernhisel included a certificate of deposit for $425 to be used for procuring land on his behalf. To confirm JS’s receipt of the deposit, Bernhisel sent the letter featured here and another nonextant communication to an “Elder Kimball,” likely . Though JS answered Bernhisel’s first letter in a communication dated 3 August 1841, evidently Bernhisel had not yet received it. That letter was intended primarily to inform Bernhisel that JS had indeed received his letter and deposit.
A docket in the handwriting of JS’s clerk indicates that JS received this 18 August letter. JS also received an additional letter from less than a month later. JS responded to both letters in mid-November 1841.
I wrote you about the 12th. Ultimo enclosing a certificate of deposite on the Greenwich bank in this for four hundred and twenty five dollars, and requested that you would do me the favor to purchase land for me to the amount of about five hundred [d]ollars, and stated that I would remit you the remaining [s]eventy five dollars by the 1st of July next, but I shall probably be enabled to do so in the course of the ensuing winter, certainly by the first of May next. Not having received an acknowledgment of the receipt of the certificate of deposite, and supposing that you were probably prevented from acknowledging <it> by the pressure of other business, I wrote a few days since to Elder Kimball, requesting him to make the inquiry and write me, as I felt anxious to know whether it had reached you in safety. In my last I desired you to make the purchase within two or three miles of , but I have very recently been informed that the price of land is very high in the immediate vicinity of that , I should therefore obtain a very small tract for five hundred dollars. If this be the case, you will have the goodness to purchase land, (if you have not already done so) at any distance within ten miles of your , but you will please to act in this matter as if you were purchasing for yourself, for you are on the spot and perfectly well acquainted with all the advantages and disadvantages of location &c &c [p. [1]]
The Greenwich Savings Bank was incorporated in 1833 and in 1841 was located at number eleven Sixth Avenue in New York City. The building was situated in lower west Manhattan, within a few blocks of Bernhisel’s residence on Hudson Street. (History of the Greenwich Savings Bank, 7–8.)
History of the Greenwich Savings Bank, New York, Together with the Acts of Incorporation and a List of the Trustees and Officers from the Foundation of the Institution. New York: De Vinne Press, 1896.