Mar 21, 2024 - Sale 2663

Sale 2663 - Lot 165

Price Realized: $ 531
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
(EDUCATION.) Thurlow J. Wright. Letter describing the overcrowded school at the Memphis contraband camp during wartime. Autograph Letter Signed to sister Caroline S. Wright of Cincinnati, OH. 4 pages, 9¾ x 7¾ inches, on one folding sheet; mailing folds, minimal wear. With stamped envelope bearing Memphis postmark. Contraband camp, Memphis, TN, 7 September 1863
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"I spent part of the afternoon in the schoolhouse among the children, young men and women, and men and women of middle age. . . . There are but few of them who can read, and the most of them do not know the alphabet, though they are spelling and trying to read in books. . . . The children received instructions as readily as white children do in other parts of the country. . . . They are not encouraged by their parents to prosecute their studies as white children are in Cincinnati are; hence, as soon as learning to read becomes irksome, as it does to many, every device imaginable is resorted to, to evade going to school. Then again, the number of scholars are far too numerous for the teachers employed. Only two young women are now in the field laboring for the common good of the scholars, and they have been sick for several weeks during the summer. The scholars under them are between two and three hundred. You may readily infer that but little time can be devoted to each class, out of so many, by two delicate females, assisted occasionally by a married woman, the wife of a soldier attached to our camp. . . . On the island, the school has been suspended for some time, as consequence of sickness; and the female school teachers are now in hospital. . . . Yet about two weeks hence it was reported that one or more of the detailed white soldiers were to be ordered to open the school and teach the young how to shoot. . . . There is not a minute to lose providing we study the best interest of the people."

The author Thurlow Joseph Wright (1817-1877) of Cincinnati was a United States Army surgeon; two months later he would become the surgeon of the 64th United States Colored Troops.