August 27, 1851. L.C. Woodruff to Ezra Cornell expressing support of leasing the New-York & Erie line to Ezra Cornell. September 6, 1851. Mckinney Irion to Ezra Cornell from Wolf River, Tennessee: "My neighbour Mr. McNeal has received some of your beautiful wheat and I am so pleased with it causes me to ask the kind favour of you to send me a small quantity?." September 16, 1851. Ezra Cornell to Amos Kendall: "My courage is fast failing. I have worked hard and incessently for the last nine years at the Telegraph business, practicing the most rigid economy, and I am now worse off than when I began. At the time I first embarked in the business I was worth five thousand dollars in real estate which rented for enough to support my family. Now that same real estate is encumbered with a mortgage for money invested in the telegraph business and I am in debt some $15,000 besides for cost of construction of the various lines, and I cannot get the first cent from any of them toards paying interest on what I owe, aside from this is the various claims of patentees for account of patent. "?My wife well knows my ability to support my family by labour if properly directed. She feels that I have followed the Telegraph quite long enough, and that it would be for our interest to abandon it in toto and all claims upon it, and direct my energies in some more productive channel. If I had been successful in the business I should not think of an appeal of this kind, but under the circumstances I think I have a claim to my devotion to the interest of Prof. Morse and his great invention entitles me to some concideration tin the settlement of this question of patent." September 25, 1851. J.J. Speed: "I can say now with great sincerity that I am used up - nothing under heaven but hope & that rather small?All I can say is I will keep trying & if I do not see a better prospect in 6 months, I will abandon the whole thing & try to get some squatters right in Oregon or elsewhere. Yours, busted all to hell, J.J. Speed Jr." Topics: Telegraph business correspondence: office operations, finances; New-York & Erie Telegraph Association.; wheat. Personal names: Woodruff, L.C.; Pew, W.P.; Kendall, Amos; Wood, Otis E.; Speed, J.J.; Munn, Stephen B.; Irion, Mckinney. Geography: New York City