William Herries correspondence

This collection contains 44 letters written by William Herries to his English relatives during his journey across the Atlantic Ocean to New York and his travels around America including Washington D.C., Pittsburgh, Kentucky, the Indiana and Louisiana territories, New Orleans, and Spanish Florida. Herries writes about people he meets including President Thomas Jefferson, Aaron Burr, William Pultney, and John Jacob Astor. He also describes his various economic endeavors including attempts as a fur trader, general merchant, trader of enslaved persons, and land speculator before his acquisition and operation of the Montesano plantation near Fort Baton Rouge and his eventual ruin following the short-lived West Florida Republic.

There is a note from Charles Herries from approximately 1816 stating that he had recently received word that William Herries had died three or four years previously. An unsigned and undated note lists all of Herries's stops from New York to New Orleans.