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Two Hitherto Unpublished Fairbanks Letters:
October 17, 1867 and November 17, 1868

In March, 2007, there were quite incidentally unearthed in Charleston's "fireproof Building" two George Fairbanks letters previously unknown to Swewanee historians. Their obscure location makes it very unlikely they had been studied by anyone for well over a century. The letters by no means rewrite history for Sewanee, now celebrating its documentation for several bits of incidental trivia.
As of April, copies of the two letters have been placed in the Sewanee Archives, along with a lengthier analysis of their historical significance. Meantime the Keystone publishes here for its readers the following transcriptions of the texts and the minimal list of twelve "earliest documentation" claims that can be made for them.

LETTER OF OCTOBER 17, 1867
(George Fairbanks writes to Messrs Hyatt & McBurney, Charleston)

University Place Tenn
Oct 17 1867

Gent.
I am in receipt of your favour in reference to balance of afd[amount brought forward?] due you from University of the South from 1860.

The accruing funds of the University were unfortunately invested in Confederate currency and securities, and at the close of the war we found our buildings entirely destroyed, our subscribers ruined and so greatly impoverished that we have as yet not rec'd a dollar from them.

Anxious if possible to have the great scheme [page 2] go on, a few of its friends have endeavored to resuscitate it and have begged some small amount of funds to commence operations again and propose as soon as we can to begin by establishing a High School.

We hope to reinstate in time the whole enterprise and look forward to the time when the country shall have in a measure recovered from its terrible prostration and when its aid may again be involved to build up an Institution such as this was designed by its founders to become. We hope also that many of our subscribers may regain their positionsand means that we will relise a portion of our [page 3] subscriptions. We must therefore beg our creditors indulgence for the present and will, as early as we can realise any of our assets, pay off all we can of our indebtedness. The last money at our disposal (in winter of 1861) I devoted to your debt, and could we have communicated with our fiscal agents we could readily have discharged the balance in currency during the War.