ELAM TILDEN TO HON. ROBERT R. LIVINGSTON
"New Lebanon, March 19, 1810.
"Dear Sir,—I want to get four or five pounds of your best full-blood Merino Wool to manufacture into cloth for a Coat. I applied to you once before for the article for the same purpose, but you informed me that your wool was all previously engaged. I hope, Sir, that you will accommodate me; I can by some means get it forwarded to Hudson, from whence I can get it. I will thank you to drop me an answer by the mail, by which conveyance I will forward you the money, or get it to you by way of my friend, Dr. Younglove, of Hudson, if you accommodate me with the wool.
"I am, Sir, Your
"humble Servant,
"Elam Tilden."
The most disastrous fire with which the city of New York has ever yet been visited is referred to in the following letter. It reduced to ashes pretty much every structure within the area bounded by Wall and Broad streets and the East River, a tract which then embraced nearly, if not quite all the important commission houses in the city; crippled all our insurance companies, and gave to the territory it covered a blow from which, after a lapse of nearly three-quarters of a century, it has but partially recovered. Like the great fire of London in the seventeenth century, it is still referred to as the Great Fire of 1835.