Mar 30, 2023 - Sale 2631

Sale 2631 - Lot 217

Price Realized: $ 5,250
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
(FAMILY PAPERS.) Letters to a Philadelphia woman re the final care of her aunt, and expanded opportunities during World War One. 19 letters addressed to Mrs. Anita Milton, 1895-1918, many with original envelopes; 2 draft letters composed by Milton, 1904-1905; and 2 receipts, 1904-1905; condition generally strong. Various places, 1895-1918
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Additional Details

Anita Cecelia Milton (1867-1920) was born in New Jersey and spent most of her life in Philadelphia; her husband William was a barber. Many of the letters relate to the final care and death of her aunt Elizabeth Stidum (1844-1904) of Camden, NJ, including 11 letters from white physician Lewis Hatton of Camden regarding the details of her final care, 1902-1905. Mrs. Milton notes that her aunt had no insurance but "belonged to a colored organization called the Order of True Reformers." The letters also include a 4-page condolence letter from her brother, the portrait artist Alfred B. Stidum, dated Pittsburgh, 15 December 1904. Another letter from Alfred dated 29 May 1895 mentions that "I will go away again upon a lecture trip soon."

3 letters are dated 1918. On 8 June 1918, a Mrs. Goode wrote from Detroit: "Work is very plentyfull here. Colord people are getting in to many kinds of work. The war has bettered conditions for colord people in many ways, but has made things bad in other ways. . . . Women are taking the places of men in diferent kinds of work." Daughter Helen wrote on 1 November 1918 from the Sail Loft division at the Philadelphia Navy Yard: "Well, the new girls are still nice, and the new man clerk is all right, only he had an idea that he could take my work away from me, and give it to one of the other girls who is a clerk. You know me, Ma. I nabbed Cochrane and told him. . . . The next day I know my work was given back to me."