Marian:

I posted the last of the Pelot letters just a few moments ago. I have found Pelot to be a very insightful fellow; he had the sense that he was participating in the prelude of something much more profound. I am trying to get a handle on this man; I do not know what happened to him after he wrote his last published letter in Oct, 1856. He obviously was very well educated. I am from an area close to where he joined the "emigrant" company to go to Kansas, and I suppose he was practicing medicine there when he joined. But the name is not an Abbeville name; the only Pelots of whom I am aware came from Charleston, S.C., 150 miles away. The Abbeville deed records were destroyed in a catastrophic fire in 1874-74, but the probate records did survive. I need to make a trip up there to see if I can't get something on him. A very interesting person!