A mundane letter of family news by a rich Newport Quaker merchant, whose father, a “violent” Loyalist during the American Revolution, had been a slave trader and South Carolina plantation owner, until he had a change of heart and became a fervent Abolitionist. This tradition was handed down to the writer’s nephew Rowland Thomas Robinson, his wife Rachel Gilpin Robinson, and, later, their children, all leaders of the Vermont Anti-Slavery Society and daring “conductors” of the Underground Railroad, who regularly harbored fugitive slaves in their home and then helped them to escape to Canada.  The Vermont Robinson home is now a National Historic Landmark, singled out as one of the best-documented “safe houses” of the Underground Railroad because of some 5,000 Robinson family letters held by Middlebury College.

    This letter says nothing about slavery or Abolition but reveals financial troubles and medical problems in the family (“nervous agitations”, “lowness of spirits” and perpetual “ennui” of various relations and the “alarming” illness of Rachel Robinson), and gives a hint of past family tensions, with the wealthy uncle hoping to “resume good and cordial intercourse” with his sheep-herding relations.  Also, intriguing is the letter’s address –the New York City “Boarding House” of Lydia Gilpin, a relative of Rachel’s – which is not mentioned in any of the Robinson historical studies and may have had some connection with their Underground Railroad activities