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Auction archive: Lot number 9

Black housekeeper honored by early American woman poet

Estimate
US$400 - US$600
Price realised:
US$510
Auction archive: Lot number 9

Black housekeeper honored by early American woman poet

Estimate
US$400 - US$600
Price realised:
US$510
Beschreibung:

4 pp. including stampless address leaf. To Sarah P. Baldwin, care of Hon. James H. Baldwin, Boston Lydia Sigourney published some of the first anti-slavery verse by an American woman. Her first Abolitionist poems were written in the early 1830s – just about the time that the colored woman Ann became her housekeeper. Her fervent sympathy for African-American, as well as Native American Indians, did not extend to her tolerance of Irish immigrants. This letter is witten to a good friend, the wife of a Boston City Engineer, whose work on the city’s water works is mentioned in the letter, as are Abbott Lawrence, U.S. ambassador to England and Harvard President Josiah Quincy. “I think you remember Ann, my old coloured woman. It is sixteen years to day since she came to live with us, and I have just completed the last of sixteen gifts, which I wish you were here, to see presented to her, as they will now [secrete?], she knowing nothing of the matter, as yet. She has been exerting herself this week, to save me labour as much as she could, our house being full of clergymen, as the Episcopal Convention is now in session. My other sole helper is a very green Emeraldine, of some sixteen summers, speaking an almost untranslatable brogue and thinking, I believe, that I stipulated only for the use of her hands and feet, as her head she never seems to use either for thought, or remembrance…”

Auction archive: Lot number 9
Auction:
Datum:
16 Dec 2021
Auction house:
PBA Galleries
1233 Sutter Street
San Francisco, CA 94109
United States
pba@pbagalleries.com
+1 (0)415 9892665
+1 (0)415 9891664
Beschreibung:

4 pp. including stampless address leaf. To Sarah P. Baldwin, care of Hon. James H. Baldwin, Boston Lydia Sigourney published some of the first anti-slavery verse by an American woman. Her first Abolitionist poems were written in the early 1830s – just about the time that the colored woman Ann became her housekeeper. Her fervent sympathy for African-American, as well as Native American Indians, did not extend to her tolerance of Irish immigrants. This letter is witten to a good friend, the wife of a Boston City Engineer, whose work on the city’s water works is mentioned in the letter, as are Abbott Lawrence, U.S. ambassador to England and Harvard President Josiah Quincy. “I think you remember Ann, my old coloured woman. It is sixteen years to day since she came to live with us, and I have just completed the last of sixteen gifts, which I wish you were here, to see presented to her, as they will now [secrete?], she knowing nothing of the matter, as yet. She has been exerting herself this week, to save me labour as much as she could, our house being full of clergymen, as the Episcopal Convention is now in session. My other sole helper is a very green Emeraldine, of some sixteen summers, speaking an almost untranslatable brogue and thinking, I believe, that I stipulated only for the use of her hands and feet, as her head she never seems to use either for thought, or remembrance…”

Auction archive: Lot number 9
Auction:
Datum:
16 Dec 2021
Auction house:
PBA Galleries
1233 Sutter Street
San Francisco, CA 94109
United States
pba@pbagalleries.com
+1 (0)415 9892665
+1 (0)415 9891664
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