The undersigned, citizens of Elbert county respectfully ask the Congress to take into consideration the establishing a line of daily or tri-weekly stage-coaches from the village of Anderson in South Carolina to Washington Wilkes county or Lexington Oglethorpe county in Georgia passing through Elberton. The County of Elbert is thickly populated and grows an average crop of cotton of about twelve thousand bales with a still larger proportion of grain—wheat and corn. There is not a stage coach running through any part of the county nor has there been one, for a number of years. We get all political and commercial news through Augusta, [...?] by two, horse-mails—one direct, the other through Washington and such is the arrangement they both arrive the same night. Elberton is only 75 miles distant from Augusta and any intelligence reaching the latter place on Thursday morning cannot be recieved here through the mail short of nine days, making an average speed of a little more than 8 miles per day. The city of Augusta is our market-town and we often get the earliest intelligence of the state of the market through road-waggons travelling from 15 to 20 miles per day[.] This statement, we assure your honourable body, is strictly true notwithstanding it may appear so incredible in this age of steam. A rail-road is about to be built from Columbia S.C. to the village of Anderson. The money, we are informed is subscribed and a part of the road already contracted for and the present seems to us a favorable time to give the people of Elbert some little benefit from the improvements of the age. The distance from Anderson to Elberton is 36 miles, from Elberton to the Lexington Depot on the Georgia Rail Road 29 making in all 65 miles. The route to Washington is the same length though the road to Lexington is much better than to Washington, for conveyance by wheels. We will be satisfied with either route though the route to Lexington has the advantage of [...?] connecting directly with the Georgia Rail Road

Total 330