68

Lovegrove & Murray, publishers.

"View of Sutter's Fort, Near Sacramento City" illustrated letter sheet, with letter.

Sacramento, CA, 30 April 1851
Autograph Letter Signed from J.A. Benton to his cousin [Susan Elliot Root] of Clinton, Oneida County, NY. 2 pages, 10¼ x 8¼ inches, plus integral blank with full-page engraving; mailing folds, several pinholes on top and bottom edges.

We trace no other examples of this Lovegrove & Murray letter sheet, showing the 1841 fort which launched the city of Sacramento.

The author of the letter, Joseph Augustine Benton (1818-1892), arrived in California as a Congregational minister early in the Gold Rush, in July 1849. He later became a professor at the Pacific Theological Seminary in San Francisco. He writes: 

"This view of the old fort is a tolerably fair one. I do not think it is taken from the best point of observation. . . . I have no prospect of anything but another year of intense labor. . . . I am a regularly settled pastor in California. I have the largest church & congregation in Sacramento. I have the reputation of writing a fair sermon & of being a poor speaker. . . . We have a good church & Sab. School. . . . Our ladies got up a fair which paid over 1000 dollars profit."

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