Dear Husband
"I write you a letter to let you know my distress my master has sold albert to a trader on Monday court day and myself and [our] other child is for sale also….I want you to tell dr hamelton and your master if either will buy me….I don’t want a trader to get me they asked me if I has got any person to buy me and I told them no they took me to the court houste too they never put me up a man buy the name of brady bought albert and is gone I don’t know where….”
I am and ever will by our kind wife
Maria Perkins
Charlottesville [Virginia], Oct. 8th, 1852