Posted on February 16, 2025

Today, Henry penned a letter to Mayne, Burn, & Mayne of Lisbon, Portugal, in response to their letter of November 22, 1755 (not found). However, Henry’s letter makes clear the subject of that letter.¹

Henry expressed his joy that they “had escaped unhurt … in that shocking misfortune with which your City was attended the first of November.”

At 9:40 in the morning on the first of November, 1755, on the Feast of All Saints, a 7.7 earthquake (known as the Great Lisbon earthquake) rocked Lisbon. With its epicenter in the Atlantic Ocean, the quake caused a tsunami that engulfed Lisbon’s downtown area, causing significant flooding and a long-burning fire.

“It cannot be doubted,” Henry continued, “that your losses … must have been very great but then you are infinitely more happy than many others who must have lost their all & perhaps some of their Family or Friends.” Henry then imagined the devastation. “We are of the opinion,” he surmised, “this has been the most violent convulsion of the Earth that ever has happen’d…. The whole Atlantick Ocean we immagine must have been agitated as the Tide ebb’d and flow’d.”

In this moment, Henry must have contemplated the eight hurricanes that hit South Carolina in his lifetime, especially the Great Hurricane of 1752, from which the province had not yet recovered, physically or politically.

Fortunately, he noted, it was great news that “your Rice was preserv’d to help the distresses of the poor.

But, as was often the case with Henry, conversations always returned to commerce. “Crops of Rice this Year won’t exceed 70,000 Barrells,” he wrote, but “Last Year we ship’d 110,000 Barrels.” He then commented about the supply and demand of rice and wheat, before closing with a personal note.

“We wish you a return of many happy Years ’till the Memory of this fatal Catastrophe shall be totally effaced.” This is quintessential Henry Laurens. His business was personal. He carefully chose his business partners. They were honest men who could be relied upon and with whom he had cultivated caring personal relationships. Such connections, historian David Hancock has argued, were essential to integrating the 18th-century of the British-Atlantic.

1. Henry Laurens to Mayne, Burn, & Mayne, Charles Town, February 24, 1756, Papers of Henry Laurens, 2:104-105. ↩︎