A Collection Transcribed
and Digitized
by Edmund Berkeley, Jr.
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, University of Virginia Library
Summary
Letter from Robert Carter to John Randolph, June 23, 1731
Robert Carter writes to attorney John Randolph, June 23, 1731, to request his preparation of legal documents that will allow the surviving partners of the Frying Pan mining company to settle the financial and other issues of the business to fairly compensate Mann Page's widow and her children. He sends copies of all documents (not present) pertaining to the company's affairs.
Letter from Robert Carter to John Randolph,
June 23, 1731
-1
-
Corotoman: [Lancaster County, Virginia]
June 23d.. 1731
John Randolph Esqr.
Sir
I will hope this will meet you in a better state
of health than you have been for some time. As you are con
cerned in all Colonel Pages
other Affairs, so I think you the properest
person to be Consulted in the method necessary for the settling
of the mine Adventure
which hitherto lies in crude preparatory
Articles only: You have herewith a Copy of all the Agreements that are
Subsisting between us My Sons Robert
& Charles
have given their
consent to the last Articles signed between Colonel page & I, Deeds for all
the lands mentioned in this Agreement were passed in my Son Roberts
name
-2
-
before Colonel Pages death; We have now Six miners sent into us upon
Sterling wages, likewise a Smith, some of them came in in Colonel pages
life time, some since. The Secretary
I take to be now the Proper person
to personate
in the behalf of Colonel : Pages Widow, & Children, I write
to him a letter to be Lodged with you; until his coming to William
sburg in his way hither; which he proposes early in the next month:
It se ems
highly Expedient to me
this affair should have a Speedy & full
settlement
regulation --
My son Robert went from hence this day with intentions
to be here again when his brother Comes; My Son Charles does the same
And it is my present resolution then to go Through with this Affair
There has been no Account Settled yet of the Respective Charges we
have Severally been at Since the beginning of the Undertaking: The Assis-
tance of a Lawyer will be absolutely Necessary for us to have; I hope the in
closed Contents will set the matter in so good a light to you, that you
may
[be]
enabled to draw proper Instruments, that will be obliging in the law
for all the Necessary Purposes to this Settlement to be Executed by us
at our meeting: These rough instruments I would willingly have prepared [illegible]
that my son
the Secretary
may bring them along with him.
I heartily wish you a full return of your health & am -- --
Sir
your most humble Servant.
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. There is a nineteenth-century copy of this letter in the Minor-Blackford Papers, James Monroe Law Office and Museum, Fredericksburg, Virginia.
The county and colony have been added for clarity to the heading on this draft.
[1] In 1728, Carter, his sons Robert and Charles, and his son-in-law Mann Page, organized a company they named Frying Pan to mine for copper on a tract of some 27,000 acres that Louis Morton describes as lying "near the present boundary of Fairfax and Loudoun counties." Fairfax Harrison wrote that the tract was "on the Horsepen of Broad." Today, there is a Frying Pan Park just east of the border of the Dulles Airport reservation, and there are other things with the name in the area. The company was not successful. (Morton. Robert Robert Carter of Nomini Hall.
pp. 18-19;
and Harrison. Landmarks. . . .
p. 342.
)
[2] Carter uses the word "personate" in the sense of "to represent." ( Oxford English Dictionary Online
. Oxford University Press.
)
This text, originally posted in 2005, was revised October 6, 2015, to add footnotes and strengthen the modern language version text.