?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 500 - $ 750
(FAMILY PAPERS.) Correspondence of the Reynolds-Downing family of Alabama, Connecticut and Georgia. 130 items sleeved in 2 binders: 97 letters, most of them to Helen Maria Downing Reynolds, plus 33 other miscellaneous documents; condition generally strong, with a few items quite worn; many stampless covers bearing postmarks from Mobile, Georgia, and elsewhere. With typed or manuscript transcripts of many letters, and numerous historical notes. Vp, 1789-1866 (bulk 1836-51)
The central figure in this archive is Helen Maria Downing (1818-1891) of Preston, CT, who married steamship captain Charles L'Hommedieu Reynolds (1816-1852). 43 letters are addressed from Charles to Helen from 1841 to 1851, most of them during their courtship and early years of their marriage, when he was based in Mobile, AL and she remained in Connecticut. His ships offered service from Mobile to New Orleans and New York. His 20 January 1851 letter describes the ruins of the famed St. Charles Hotel in New Orleans which had burned two days before. 29 letters are from Helen's sister Louisa Tyler Downing (1816-1846), who married Andrew Huntington in 1840. 14 of the letters are written from Eatonton, GA southeast of Atlanta, where she taught school from 1838 until her marriage in 1840; most of her later letters are from Savannah, GA and Springfield, MA. Her 19 November 1842 letter describes at length a terrifying sea voyage from New York to Savannah. Among the other letters is one from Charles's uncle Joseph Reynolds (1766-1844) to his sister Abigail L'Hommedieu dated Philadelphia, 26 September 1820. It includes 3 paragraphs of detailed instructions offered personally by "J. Smith, Indian Physician" on steeping Seneca snakeroot, cherry bark, poplar bark and other ingredients in wine. Helen wrote to her mother on 5 April 1841 from Providence, RI, reporting on the death of President William Henry Harrison: "All the bells in the town are tolling. . . . The Arcade . . . instead of being dressed in everything gay was completely dressed in mourning. . . . The stores were all closed at the request of the mayor of the city. A piece of black crepe is tied round the back of each door."
