?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
(EDUCATION.) Early cabinet card showing the staff and students of Storer College. Silver print, 3 3/4 x 4 3/4 inches, on original plain mount; minor wear; gift inscription on verso. Harpers Ferry, WV, 5 February 1877
Storer College grew out of a humble school for freedmen in Harpers Ferry which was established in 1865. It was chartered in 1868, and became an important locus of the early civil rights movement, in part because of its proximity to the site of John Brown's raid. Frederick Douglass delivered an important speech on John Brown there in 1881, the NAACP was born there in 1906, and John Brown's Fort was relocated to the campus in 1909 (it has since been moved back to near its original location in downtown Harpers Ferry). The school closed in 1955, and the campus is now part of Harpers Ferry National Historical Park.
This photograph is captioned on verso "Storer Normal School students sitting in the shadow of the Boys Boarding Hall on the north side. Mrs. E. Morrell from Uncle Aleck." The handwriting matches that of the Rev. Alexander Hatch Morrell (1818-1885), a central figure in the school's early years. He appears to be seated in the front row of this photograph, the white-bearded man third from the left.
