James Wallace Hooff sent this letter to Jannett Hooff Brown in Richmond in November 1847. The letter inside is dated 24 November and the envelope was postmarked the following day. Its Alexandria provisional is the only recorded example printed on blue paper; the other surviving stamps are on buff paper. The correspondence survived despite the lovers’ request that it be destroyed. Their daughter later discovered it among family papers in 1907. The cover became a named philatelic rarity and was subsequently included in the Erivan collection. Its present owner is not identified here.