On October 8, 1852, Maria Perkins, an enslaved woman in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, addressed a letter to her husband, also enslaved. In the letter, she shared the news that their son Albert had been sold to a trader, expressed fears that she too might be sold, and expressed her desire for her family to be reunited. Perkins was literate, something uncommon among slaves, and all that is known about her comes from this letter.
Ulrich Bonnell Phillips discovered the letter and published it in 1929. Christopher Hager, in his book Word by Word (2013), critically analyzes the document as a case study and suggests that it progresses from conventional correspondence to frantic diarying. Often cited as an example of slave writing, Perkins's letter is quoted by many textbooks in the United States to illustrate slaves' personal struggle, heartbreak, and strategic thinking.