A cover addressed to "Hon. Elihu Yale, Esq, at Fort St. George in India"

Direct access to Indian commodities immensely enriched European trading communities and large fortunes were made by individual European traders while in India. Elihu Yale, major founding donor of Yale University was one among them. Yale, who arrived in Madras in 1672 as a clerk for the East India Company became governor of Fort St. George, Madras from 1687-92. During the twenty years he spent at Fort St. George with the British East India Company he traded in spices, cotton, diamonds, pearls from Tuticorin and also manufactured goods, and he returned home a very wealthy trader. A partial list of items Yale sent from India in one shipment included bags of diamonds and pearls, musk, rich embroidered silk, bales of cotton and tons of black pepper. During his tenure in Madras the commodities Yale gifted to the newly founded Connecticut College were sold for £1200, a large fortune at that time, and the college was renamed Yale College, and was the precursor to the modern Yale University.
The image from the Yale University archives shows a cover addressed to Elihu Yale, while he was the governor of Fort St. George.