?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000
(SLAVERY.) Extensive Credit Sale of Slaves! At Auction, at the City Hotel. 112 Likely Young Negroes. 3 printed pages, 12¾ x 8 inches, on one folding sheet; horizontal folds, light toning and minor foxing; sale prices written in for most of the lots. [New Orleans, LA]: C.E. Girardey & Co., Auctioneers, 20 December 1859
An unusually detailed auction catalogue with enslaved people offered in 118 lots--most of them singly but a few in pairs. Prices are penciled in the margins for most of the first 75 lots.
The names, ages and a brief description are offered for each. Many are described as "No. 1 field hand" or "No. 1 cotton picker," while others are noted as tanners, carriage drivers, gardeners, cooks, and more. Aleck, 21 and his brother Frank, 18 were described as "both good fiddlers"; they were sold separately. Archibald, 25 and his wife Isabella, 20, a "first rate cook," were offered separately but were sold together for $3,000. Jaco, 40, is described as "No. 1 plantation blacksmith; war[ant]ed to give satisfaction, slightly ruptured." Daniel, aged 18, is described as a "fair plantation bl'ckmith, raised by Jacob." They were described collectively as "without exception, one of the choicest lots of slaves ever offered in this market, and well worthy the attention of planters and housekeepers."
This auction was held at the City Hotel in New Orleans, a frequent site for slave auctions. Girardey was apparently a major slave auctioneer; at least two of his other broadsides have come to auction. One other example of the present piece has been traced, at the Massachusetts Historical Society.
Provenance: James Minot Rockwood (1836-1918), a machinist from Belgrade, ME who was working in New Orleans in 1859; his son Ralph Hubbard Rockwood Sr. (1874-1958); a relative in Idaho; sold to the consignor as contents of a handmade Rockford family desk. With: envelope bearing Rockwood's name and Waterville, ME address explaining the acquisition of the piece; later clippings regarding the career of Ralph Hubbard Rockwood; a circa 1890s cabinet card of a young man believed to be Ralph Hubbard Rockwood.
