[Autograph Letter, Signed, from a New Englander Who Settled in Missouri, Discussing the Clothing of Slaves, Western Emigration, His Next Move West, and More]

[Missouri: April 1, 1860. Very good.. [4]pp., on a single folded sheet. Original mailing folds, minor toning. An informative letter written by Charles H. Cram in Missouri to a friend in New England, dated "April Fools Day 1860" in red pencil at the top of the first page. Cram mentions hoop skirts, Pike's Peak, and slavery while trying to decide whether to continue westward during the latter years of the California Gold Rush. Cram's letter reads, in part: "Everybody is going to Pikes Peak but me. I think some of them will wish they were back again but they have got the gold fever and nothing else will cure them. I have learned better than to follow the biggest nois and the great rush. The emigrants to Pikes Peake will most of them will have to sleep on the ground and depend on the rifle for something to eat.... I may start for Santa Fe about the first of June. I can git 15 dollars a month to drive a teem to Santa Fe. If I do cross the plains I shall go to California but if I have good health I shall stay here though I do not like to live in a slave state."

In another portion of his letter, Cram addresses his correspondent's question of whether slaves and freedpersons wore hoop skirts in Missouri. Cram writes: "You wanted to know if niggers wore hoops. Some do and some don't, some slaves in broadcloth and silk and some go nearly naked. Slaves have there stent to do so much & if they do more they are payed for it. Most of them have a piece of ground that they call their own. What time they get they work on it. That is [how] they git their fine cloths. There is not a nigger in Missouri that works as hard as I do but I have consolation that I can work [only] when I am a mind to. You tell Albert not to start out among strangers as I did for he will find the people different in the country from them in New England."

Cram then speaks to the emigrant populations he encounters out west, as well as the agricultural bounty and animal life of Missouri: "The greatest difficulty I had was to learn the French and German language. I have been for weeks where I could not understand a word but now I can understand anything that comes along. But now for something else. The peach trees are in flower and the woods look green. Cattle and horses pick their living here the year round. I have not seen a barn in the country. The way to feed a horse is to tie him up to a tree and throw him a few ears of corn on the ground. I cannot rite to day much for there is half a dozen in the room talking about pikes peak or some young lady and how many negroes her father owns, etc." Cram ends his letter with some advice for his friends back east: "Tell Mr. Bosworth that if he can rais $500 that he had better go to Cansas [Kansas] and go to farming. If you can persuade Andrew Marshall to go west it will be a good lesson for him."

A mid-19th century manuscript letter with informative observations on the clothing of slaves,