I still need to track down “authorities” to verify, but this appears to be a real handwritten letter or speech  written by a Robert Creuzbauer, a Texas surveyor  about the VARA and Chain standards for measuring land.  It gives a very clear description of the Vara standard and how it relates, or doesn’t relate to the Chains used elsewhere and since.  The document came next to a newspaper article with election results dated 1845– so that’s awesome.  There’s a scan of the whole document from the sale listing, and a typed version here if you are interested to see why we are so interested.

Now we can use and share without concern for copyrights.  This makes a great math/history artifact and topic.  I hope some Texas teachers will be interested!