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Norfolk Va Aug 25th 1866

To his Excely Andrew Johnson
P. US.

Sir
Having taken part with the Confederate States, and coming under the $20,000 clause of the Amnesty Proclamation, I applied for and received the requisite pardon on 10 September 1865.

A portion of my property has been returned to me, but the F. Bureau occupied my farm in Norfolk County, generally known as the "Taylor Farm". All my efforts to recover it have failed and I now apply to you as my only hope.- When I tell you that I am informed by a lumber getter, that upwards of two millions of feet of plank of the best quality have been cut from the land since its seizure by the Bureau, besides many thousand cords of fuel, and that from my fishery $3,000 worth of fish were caught, in two days last Spring, you will readily understand why obstacles are thrown in way of my recovery of the property. 

It has been occupied as a negro encampment: you can conceive what waste has occurred with several thousand lawless blacks assembled on the plantation. 

Last fall, after some delay, I obtained an order to restore to me the "unoccupied land" - whatever that might be - but as the buildings were retained, and the negroes remained, that order was illusory.

A Mr C F Johnson, the sub agent of the Bureau, at this place applied to me to lease it to the Bureau, but I declined, as I wished to cultivate it, & moreover the destruction of wood by the blacks would ruin the farm already seriously injured.

At Col Brown's request, I went to Richmond to see him on this subject, and again refused to lease, upon the same grounds. He admitted the force of my objections, and declared his wish to relieve me, but said he did not know where to put the blacks. He, however, himself suggested their removal to Genl Wise's farm

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