Howard Party

To His Excellency General The Right
Honourable Lord Charles Henry Somerset
Governor of His Majestys Castle, Town and
Settlement of the Cape of Good Hope
&c &c &c

May it please Your Excellency
We the undersigned, His Majestys loyal
subjects, who emigrated to this Colony at the close of the Year
1819, cannot forbear to express to your Excellency our grateful
acknowledgments to the kind and seasonable supply of Rice
and Seed Corn which we have just received, by order of the Worshipful,
the Landdrost of Albany, under the sanction of your
Excellencys wise and philantropic Government, and for all the
beneficent plans which your Excellency is so promptly and generously
forming, for the good of our suffering countrymen, at such
an alarming crisis, when a famine of bread (from the entire
failure of two successive Harvests) is turning pale the most
manly countenance, but which brightens as such public acts
of christian magnanimity, which give additional lustre to the
gems which adorn the Imperial Diadem of our beloved Sovereign
and will survive the period, when the rude hand of Time, shall
have completely obliterated the pages of History and destroyed
the laurel which Fame may have continued around the brows
of her most renowned and Illustrious Heros, and we beg leave to
assure your Excellency, that your goodness will operate as a
stimulous to future Industry and diligence, in the cultivation
of our several allotments of Land, which we cherish a hope, will
under the blessings of Heaven. gratify your Excellency by hearing
that the golden ears of a luxuriant crop of Corn, majestically wave
before the genial breezes of the ensuing summer but in the mean while
we humbly and earnestly pray that your Excellency will be
graciously pleased to order a continuance of Rice, during

the intervening season of peril and distress when we hope a
kind and indulgent providence will permit us to enjoy the noble
and much desired independance of providing entirely for the want
of ourselves and our families and for which we shall ever feel
ourselves in duty bound to pray for your Excellency and your
Illustrious family.
Salem Hills, Near Grahams Town
July 14 1822
Wm Howard, Head of the party
Henry Harper
John Poulton
Wm Tarr
Edwd Heley
John Blakesmore
Jiles Willan
James Watts
Thos Bainbridge