Mar 30, 2023 - Sale 2631

Sale 2631 - Lot 28

Price Realized: $ 2,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
(SLAVERY & ABOLITION.) Memorandum book from a Maryland plantation. [69] manuscript pages. 12mo, original calf wrappers, moderate wear; minor wear and dampstaining to contents. Charles County, MD, 1858-1864

Additional Details

This plantation notebook, kept by a recently widowed owner, makes several references to the work done by the enslaved people on a midsized plantation in southern Maryland. For example, it records "hands" hired out to work on county roads, including "two men and two women" on 19 March 1859. Others were hired out to neighboring local plantations: "Received of John D. Bowling 13 dollars for hire for hands." On 26 August 1861, she "paid 17 dollars for taking Charles out of jail for the estate." An undated entry notes that she "received 95 dollars from John T. Wood for hire of Negro man Edward."

The author Mary Catherine Murdock Bowie (1810-1870) married Samuel Carey Moran (1800-1858) and settled in rural Bryantown, Charles County, in southern Maryland. Shortly after his death she began keeping this memorandum book as Mary M. Moran. The 1860 census credits her with property valued at $35,000 and 20 enslaved people.

Laid in is an 1858 manuscript pass "to permit my servant woman Beckey and boy Bob to pass and repass from my house to Washington City without any interruption whatever."