Robert King Carter's Correspondence and Diary

   A Collection Transcribed
        and Digitized
   by Edmund Berkeley, Jr.


List of Letters | About This Collection

Electronic Text Center , University of Virginia Library


Summary



Letter from Robert Carter to William Dawkins, September 12, 1728

     Robert Carter writes to London merchant William Dawkins, September 12, 1728, to order silver spoons, wooden-handled knives and forks, and pistol powder and shot.



Letter from Robert Carter to William Dawkins, September 12, 1728


-1 -

Rappahannock, [Lancaster County, Virginia]     
Sepr. the 12th. 1728

Mr. Wm. Dawkins

Sir --

     I hope this will have the luck to get to you time
Enough I desire you to Send me in a dozen Strong Substantial Silver
Spoons to have the two first Letters of my name upon them I also
desire you to Send me in four hundred weight of Drop Shot, & a
Barrel of the best Pistol powder One half of the Shot to be that
Sort thats called Bristol Shot the other half a Smaller Size, also
to Send me a Case of a dozen Strong wooden handled fashionable
knives and forks, which Shall be all at Present from


              Sir
                  Yor humble Servant

per Raymond
Copy per Naylor


NOTES



Source copy consulted: Letter book, 1728 August-1731 July, Robert Carter Papers (acc. no. 3807), Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia.

Robert Carter generally used a return address of "Rappahannock" for the river on which he lived rather than "Corotoman," the name of his home, on his correspondence, especially to merchants abroad. The county and colony have been added for clarity.

[1] In Carter's day, the muzzle loading weapons performed best when loaded with a spherical projectile manufactured by pouring drops of molten lead into a pool of water. "Small shot had been made by the 'long drop into water'" method for around a hundred years" before the invention of the tower for that purpose by a Bristol man, William Watts, about 1780. ( Walter Mnichinton. "The Shot Tower" in The Shot Peener . 7[#3 Fall 1993]:22-24, reprinted from American Heritage , 199; and "Lead Working in Bristol'")

[2] No information about Captain Raymond has been found.

[3] Carter sent letters by Captain Naylor of a Liverpool ship in the fall of 1728, but apparently the ship was lost because Carter noted to William Dawkins June 29, 1729 , the ship "hath never been heard of."


This text, originally posted in 2004, was revised January 9, 2015, to add footnotes and strengthen the modern language version text.