Nov 25, 2014 - Sale 2368

Sale 2368 - Lot 275

Price Realized: $ 562
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 300 - $ 400
(RHODE ISLAND.) Small archive of Brown-Sanford family papers, many from Middletown, RI. 36 items in one sleeve: 5 letters, 1809-71; 10 land documents, 1797-1833; 11 receipts, 1767-1851; 8 military and justice of the peace commissions, 1821-75; 8 legal documents (probate, writs, etc.), 1781-1854; an 1837 town work log; a worn 1794 newspaper; a recipe; and a fragment of a Fuller family register, 1798-1805. Various sizes and conditions. Vp, 1767-1871

Additional Details

As miscellaneous a collection of family papers as we have ever seen. We have not untangled all of the relationships, but Peleg Sanford (born 1769) and his son-in-law Pardon Brown (1801-1881) of Middletown, RI make repeat appearances. Highlights include a 1863 letter from Sarah Sanford Brown to her husband about the Civil War draft: "every body drafted in Pourchmouth amost, & do not see what we are agoing to do without men to work on the land, some say thay will see the streets wet with blood in Newport before thay go to war." One commission is issued to John E. Bennett for service as a sergeant in the 1st Rhode Island Cavalry, 1863; another is signed by noted explorer and bibliophile John Russell Bartlett as secretary of state, 1862. Peleg Sanford as justice of the peace recorded an interview with Eliza Potter, a "single woman . . . lately delivered of a bastard child," 1818.