Merchant, of Petersburg, Va. Correspondence, accounts, invoices, statements, and legal papers (chiefly 1814-1872) of Leslie, a member of the Virginia mercantile firm of Leslie and Shepherd, and a slave owner. The papers before 1819 largely concern the processing and sale of cotton, tobacco, rice, and western lands. Most of the papers after 1819 pertain to tobacco manufacture in the Richmond-Petersburg area. Other topics include Leslie’s career, family, and travels in England; his western landholdings and efforts to develop the West; his slaveholding and attitude toward it; mercantile prices and U.S.-British trade; and absentee landlordship referring to the maintenance of American property owned by Englishmen. Later material includes scattered correspondence and business papers of Leslie’s nephews, Robert L. Watson and John McGill, whom Leslie had admitted to partnership in the firm.
