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I hope to be able to open a school in it next October if assistance can be obtained from the Bureau to finish and fit it up. This assistance I shall not ask for however until I have exhausted all that can be extracted from the colored and white populations. The colored people in this region were fleeced out of several hundred dollars by one Dr. Parker (colored) -a plausible rascal,-last fall and winter. Parker pretended that his purpose was to build a college! for colored people in Bastrop with the money collected. As he pretended to be a very strong "Southern Sympathiser" he also succeeded in gulling some whites who thought to make a tool of him. 

For this reason I have found the task a much more difficult one than it would have been otherwise, for the freedman's distrust once [[crossed-out]] being [[/crossed-out]] aroused it is no easy matter to allay it.

Very respectfully
Your obt. Servt.
Byron Porter
Sub Asst. Comr.
Bu. R.F. and A.L.