Autograph letter signed by Benjamin Morris Gauldin (1808-after 1860). Buckingham Female Collegiate Institute, Gravel Hill, [Virginia], 22 June 1841. 2 pages, folio, 8 1/8 x 12 1/2 in. With integral address panel. 

Benjamin Morris Gauldin writes to his nephew Josiah Hendrick (b. 1821), who was a Missouri resident in 1841. We learn from the letter that he was living at the Buckingham Female Collegiate Institute in a merchandising partnership with Samuel Benjamin Rush Loving (1813-1896).

He writes to Josiah partly in regards to an inheritance of slaves and hiring them out: "I have hired out Lucy for 50 dollars, Bet for 40 dollars, Edy for 42 dollars [and] 50 cents. Mary & children for 10 dollars. Chany & child for 00.00. These things I keep in a book to show. If death don't take place, I mean to make a lady of Pat. Our chance is good. She learns very fast indeed. I you think you can do better here than there, you can come in the spring. I will do all I can for you if you come."

Gauldin is enumerated in the 1840 census as enslaving 6 individuals in Buckingham County. By 1850, he had moved west to Saline, Missouri, where he is listed as a farmer. In the 1860 Slave Schedule, Gauldin is recorded as enslaving 7 individuals in Saline.

The Buckingham Female Collegiate Institute was established in 1831 and was the first charted college for women in Virginia. Opened to students in 1838, it offered the degrees of either Mistress of English Literature or Mistress of Classical Literature. 

Condition: separations along old folds with repairs, loss to bifolium leaf, not affecting address panel.

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