?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 400 - $ 600
(PHOTOGRAPHY.) Cased image of a woman, sent through the mail. Ninth-plate ambrotype, 2 1/2 x 2 inches, with earrings and brooch hand-colored in gold; discoloration at edges extending into face area, minor wear to case; address label pasted on case reading "Mr. Scroggins, Portsmouth Va., Box 1036," crossed out to read "601" and stamped "ADVERTISED" by the dead-letter office. Np, circa 1850s or 1860s
This photograph of a young woman was delivered through the mail to a Virginia address, but was undeliverable, and marked "ADVERTISED" by the post office. It was found among other similar photographs from a dead-letter office. Was Mr. Scroggins a plantation owner being offered a new house slave? A free black man getting a picture of a family member? We find nobody with the Scroggins name in Portsmouth during this time; the true story may be impossible to learn.
