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 I feel highly honored, although it is in a secondary capacity, in being the bearer of it; as the State from which it came is the one of my adoption, and the County in Virginia, in which he, to whose memory it is given, lived so long and so beloved, is that of my birth place. In the names of the fair ones who wrought, and the one who commissioned me to bear it, I deliver it to you, as a small token of their, as well as his and my devotion to, and admiration of, the great and good man to whose name you are about to rear your fabric. Respectfully, JOS. F. LEWIS. July 4th, 1848.