Exceptional Abolitionist Family CDV Album Containing Photographs of Slaves, Views of Port Royal, South Carolina, and Portrait

Lot 193

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6270 Este Ave.
Cincinnati , OH 45232
United States

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Live

American History: Live Salesroom Auction

By Cowan's Auctions

Nov 17, 2017 - Nov 18, 2017

Set Reminder 2017-11-17 10:00:00 2017-11-18 10:00:00 America/New_York Bidsquare Bidsquare : American History: Live Salesroom Auction https://www.bidsquare.com/auctions/cowans/american-history-live-salesroom-auction-2769 Cowan's Auctions dawnie@cowans.com

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Lot Description

Album containing 70 CDVs, plus 40 loose CDVs that came from the same estate. Identifications and content in the album point to the likelihood that the album was originally compiled during and soon after the Civil War by a member of the Parrish family, a prominent Quaker family in Philadelphia. The first half of the album is primarily a collection of portraits of prominent personalities, mostly Quakers or other reformers, many of whom were noted for public anti-slavery sentiments. Those which we have been able to identify include: Lucretia Mott; James Mott; George Fox; Stephen Grellet; Elizabeth Fry; Hannah Backhouse; Albert Barnes; John Newton(?); Phillips Brooks; Anna Dickinson Bishop Potter; Dorothea Dix; George Downing. There is also a fine portrait of Ulysses S. Grant as lieutenant general; an albumen CDV of an engraving of Abraham Lincoln; portraits of Queen Victoria and the Prince of Wales; and lithographed cartes of George Washington and Martha Washington.

Content toward the end of the album becomes much more personal to the owner. There is a series of seven photographs of Beaufort, South Carolina, four of which bear the backmark of Samuel A. Cooley, photographer to the Tenth Army Corps, including the "Beaufort Soldiers' Chapel and Reading Room"; "Path to the river of Smith's Plantation," with five federal soldiers standing out front; "Beaufort House/ Where we Stopped, showing the Beaufort Hotel and nextdoor office of the Adams Express Company"; "Soldiers' Graves," with hundreds of graves visible, many with names and their Union regiments legible under magnification; "Gen. Saxton's Headquarters," accompanied by portrait of Gen. Saxton, by Cooley; "Father French's House," which was also used by Gen. Saxton as a headquarters and purchased by him after the war, and still stands as the Cuthbert House Inn, at 1203 Bay St.; and "Our House." There are three CDVs, all published by Beaufort photographers Hubbard & Mix, showing white women teaching recently-freed black children, posed with books open. The three women are identified as Laura M. Towne, Harriet Murray, and Ellen Murray, with Ellen's also noting her students as Peg Aiken and "Little Gracie Chaplin (one of Miss Murray's brightest pupils)". Another Hubbard & Mix photograph shows a young African-American man dressed in ragged clothing, captioned on the carte "I'm a freeman," and on the album page: "Young Roslin says, 'Now I'm free, I go to bed/ when I please, I'se gits up/ when I please. In olden times/ I'se help gits de breakfast/ but no'se time to eats it myself/ Ha-ha-I'se happy boy now." Finally, three cartes from Nashville, TN, photographers, including one by T.M. Schleier, showing an African American woman and two children, one much lighter-skinned than the other, titled on recto "Lights & Shadows of Southern Life" and on verso "Aunt Martha and children/ Slaves/ Nashville, Tenn." The other Nashville cartes are a pair by Morse's Gallery of the Cumberland, showing the same African-American boy, with one titled "Before the Proclamation," in which he looks sullen, and one titled "After the Proclamation" in which he is grinning ear to ear.

Condition

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