Sep 30, 2021 - Sale 2580

Sale 2580 - Lot 163

Price Realized: $ 625
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
(MASSACHUSETTS.) Archive of Russell family correspondence. Approximately 163 items (0.4 linear feet) in one box and one binder, the great majority of them letters most addressed to Amelia Drew Russell of Kingston from her children elsewhere in Massachusetts; condition generally strong. Various places, bulk 1834-1852
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The great bulk of these letters are addressed to Amelia Drew Russell (1785-1868) of Kingston, MA south of Boston, widow of a merchant in East India goods and mother of nine. The collection includes one lone letter written by the matriarch, to her stepson George on 24 January 1848: "I return the snuff you sent last. It is not what is wanted. I did not think . . . that I should embark so extensively in the snuff trade, but so it is."

Her most regular correspondent in this collection is her stepson George Russell (1802-1857), a Boston clerk and church deacon, represented with 78 letters from 1834 to 1850 and undated. His 19 January 1842 letter discusses a controversy over abolitionist Isaac Knapp, former co-publisher of the Liberator: "We have strange 'Times' here in the city--that paper has ben trying to get up a mob for Mr. Knapp, but has not yet succeeded. Mr. K is preaching at Bowdoin Square Church & tonight & last night the whole spacious square was crowded with thousands of people who were desirous of a row. . . . Last night they followed Mr. Knapp home to the house of a Baptist brother" who "invited them into his parlor, told them if they would come in Mr. Knapp would pray for them all night. They gave the man 3 cheers for his courage & then went off." On 3 February 1844 he wrote "Garrison & his party are driving to the destruction of everything good."

15 letters are from Amelia's daughter Julia Russell Wright (1817-1849) and her husband, the Rev. Daniel Wright (1808-1895), from 1841 to 1852 (after Julia's death), mostly written from Cambridge and North Scituate, MA.

6 are from daughter Nancy Russell Whitman (1807-1847), who married Edward Burke Whitman in 1839. The letters are dated 1840-45 and undated, mostly from Cambridge, MA.

24 are from daughter Catherine Russell (1814-1859), mostly from Cambridge and other towns in Massachusetts, 1837-1850.

Also included are 22 miscellaneous letters, 1834-1884 and undated; an 1846 postal receipt; and 16 pieces of ephemera, memoranda, and manuscript verse.