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295

Oct. 11

Rev. Lyman Abbott.
Gen. Sec. F. U. Com.

My Dear Sir:

Our attention was called to Rippon Hall as a fine location for the kind of school contemplated, first by the fact that the whole place -- 2500 acres -- was owned by northern men whose presence there, with their families insured the prevalence of good institutions and moral support for the school. The tract offered for sale is 500 acres at $20 per acre. The soil is excellent, a sandy loam -- always bearing fine crops, never better than this year.  Its location, immediately on navigable water, convenient to markets at Richmond, Norfolk and Baltimore, and in daily communication with them by steam-boat, secures a prompt and cheap delivery of the products of the soil when they can be exchanged for cash. Its vast oyster beds, from which 2000 baskets per week are sent to N.Y. city during the season [this amt. from the whole front of the Rippon Hall property] would furnish profitable employment in winter, when little