The Thomas Leech collection primarily consists of six letters from coffee planter Thomas Leech of Havana, Cuba, to his nephew Charles Jenkins at the plantation at San Marcos, Cuba. The letters pertain largely to the transportation of horses, jugs, ropes, onions, snuff, clothing, coffee, tobacco, and other goods between the city and the plantation. Leech remarks on the low price of coffee, recovering escaped enslaved persons, and business prospects. Two additional letters in the collection are by Joseph Scull, executor of Leech's estate following his death in 1815, to N. B. Boileau in Philadelphia (possibly the family's attorney stateside). Scull's letters shed light on problems that Leech was facing, including a mortgage with Savage & Dugan, insufficient slave labor, and a falling out between Leech and Jenkins.
Thomas Leech was owner of a coffee plantation at St. Mark's (San Marcos), Cuba, in the early 19th century. Between at least 1811 and 1813, Leech's nephew Charles Jenkins worked on the plantation while his uncle was in Havana. The planter was not particularly successful, struggling to keep sufficient slave labor and producing less product than expected. On August 26, 1812, he wrote to his nephew about the "terrible times" at San Marcos: "it seems the further I go the worse I fare, & if it was not for my great hopes & good spirits I should sink under the load." Philadelphia underwriters Savage & Dugan held a mortgage of between $7,000 and $8,000 on the property at the time of Leech's death in 1815.
