[Manuscript Letter Written by a Woman Slave-Owner Discussing the Secession of Florida]

Starke, Fl: January 7, 1861. Very good.. [1]pp. Quarto. Contemporary lined paper. Old fold lines, light creasing and wear. Mrs. Mahalia Mansell of Starke, Florida in Newriver County writes to Mr. Richard Lenhart asking for money and mentioning that the state has seceded. She writes (with misspellings as present in the document), "I wrot yew a leter to send mee my money but if yew hant started it dont till times get beter fore I am afurd that I might not get it and dont start it till I right again... I have nothing of importance to write times is hard here now they peopl is in a grat fright about they sesesiones and and [sic] afrad of war Florida has seeseid as well as South Carolina..." Starke is located in north central Florida, about halfway between Jacksonville and Gainesville. Its first post office was established just four years earlier, in 1857. It was not incorporated as a town until 1870, and the 1880 census records show a mere 292 inhabitants. Census records of 1860 show Mahalia Stark (1826-1870) as a widow farmer with four children. They additionally show that she owned five enslaved people: a woman age twenty, a young man of seventeen, and three children aged eleven, two and six months. A brief letter, but interesting for both its origin point and its author.