Drumlanrig Letters
Annotated transcription of correspondence between a Glasgow merchant family and their Demerara estate manager, recovered from a private Otago collection.
CorrespondenceTranscription
The letters cover the period 1819 to 1834 and were found inside the back boards of a damaged ledger that had been kept in a shed in central Otago for at least two generations.
Some pages are partially eaten through. Others have been over-written with later household notes, including a recipe and what looks like a list of sheep counts.
The transcription preserves the over-written layers rather than removing them. The published version will include a separate appendix of all illegible passages, marked as illegible rather than guessed at.