Legal documents and correspondence concerning an 1879 contract between Father Sorin and Fr. Thomas A. Hayes CSC for Sorin to purchase a building in San Francisco and land in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Correspondents include Hayes and David J. Miller, clerk at the US Surveyor General's Office in Santa Fe. A copy of the contract is included along with notes by Philip S. Moore CSC, who was apparently researching the case in the 1960s. Although the contract was signed by Sorin, the transaction was never passed by the Local Council and therefore never consumated.