Typescript copy of letter signed W.A. Hall, Fayette, to sister Lydia [Marmion] and Dr. [Nickolas] Marmion, Harpers Ferry, Va. First impressions of Missouri. Howard County is next to St. Louis the oldest in the State; there are many people of wealth, and some who in the east were among the most respectable…Yet tailors and shoemakers move in the first circles. Our profession is regarded much in the same light that cobbling is and justly, for lawyers spring up like mushrooms, and such pettifogging, such contemptible arts for supplanting each other justly degrades the profession to a level with the basest employment. There are in this town perhaps ten lawyers, and the business not equal to their support. A man who wants law business attended to will go from one to another getting one to bid against another until he reduces him to the least fee a man will take. P.S….the mail has closed, so I have opened my letter, and find it is rather lugubrious. Two days have passed and already familiarity has made things appear more tolerable. (Typescript courtesy W. Howard Adams, Jackson County Historical Society, 1958. Original is in Jackson County Historical Society manuscripts collection.), 1841 Dec 6

Item — Box: 1, Folder: 1

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

From the Collection:

The collection contains primarily letters of Hall family members to family in Virginia and Missouri discussing family news, farming, their enslaved labor, their legal and political careers, the Mexican-American War, the California Gold Rush, and the John Brown raid on Harpers Ferry. Correspondents include Willard P. Hall and wife Anne E. Richardson Hall, mother Statira Hall, and siblings William A. Hall, George H. Hall, Mary Hall, and Anna Hall.