Sep 27, 2018 - Sale 2486

Sale 2486 - Lot 271

Price Realized: $ 1,062
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
(COLONIAL WARS.) Dudley, Joseph. Letter urging aid for an Indian raid survivor who lost her husband. Autograph Letter Signed "JDudley" as governor of Massachusetts Bay to James Conver, Speaker of the House of Representatives in Boston. One page, 6 3/4 x 4 1/2 inches, plus integral address leaf without postal markings, with docketing on verso; minor dampstaining and toning, mount remnants on address panel, slight offsetting from docketing to main page; Christmas 1890 gift inscription penciled on verso of letter from noted collector John S.H. Fogg to W.A. Thomas. Np, 20 June 1704
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This letter urges the colony's aid to a civilian victim of Queen Anne's War, then simmering on the New England frontier: "The bearer Mrs. Simpson lost her husband last year by the Indians. Had a great quantity of pork brought away by Captain Willard from her place which was lost by the weather and carelessness of the soldiers. She is ready to starve, is an object of the favour of the Governor." The docketing gives her full name as Mary Simpson. The Indian raid on Deerfield, the most remembered event of the war, had occurred the previous February; no Simpsons were noted among the many victims. More likely, Mr. Simpson died in one of the many Indian raids which took place in Maine in 1703.
Dudley was in the midst of a busy week when he scrawled out this note. The pirate John Quelch had recently been arrested, and Dudley ordered the first admiralty trial ever held in the British colonies, which began on 17 June; Captain Quelch was executed on 30 June.