Mar 30, 2023 - Sale 2631

Sale 2631 - Lot 23

Price Realized: $ 1,375
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
(SLAVERY & ABOLITION.) Reward receipt, bills of sale, hire agreement and more from a Missouri plantation. 8 manuscript documents, each 7 1/2 inches square or smaller; generally minor wear except as noted. Saline County, MO, 1847-1873
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Additional Details

The plantation owner William Walker Field (1812-1888) was born in Virginia, and settled in Saline County, Missouri by 1840, about 4 miles north of the town of Slater, where he spent the remainder of his life. This collection includes 8 documents relating to the enslaved people on his plantation, including:

Receipt for $100 paid by Field "for the reward money for catching one Negro man named Jack, having ran away from Saline County," signed by the slave catcher Thomas T. Smith. Independence, MO, 23 October 1856.

Receipt for services provided by Dr. D.K. Rule in 1847 and 1848, including "extracting tooth for Negro woman" and "2 visits to Negro babe--presc. & med."

2 bills of sale to Field: for "a negro boy named Jack" from the estate of Martha Susan Hendrick (water-damaged), 11 May 1848; and for "a Negro boy named Anderson about twenty-nine years old" by John Jones Sr., Arrow Rock MO, 26 December 1856.

A bill of sale by Field of "two Negro girls Marial and Annah aged about eight & ten years" to William L. Saltonstall, 29 November 1859.

Agreement "for the hire of Negroe boy Joe said to be returned well clothed &c" from John Jones Sr., 26 December 1854.

Post-emancipation agreement by J.C. Jones that Field should "have my daughter Mary Docia to raise, and I hereby relinquish my parental authority and control over said daughter until she arrives at the age of eighteen years," 13 February 1873.

Tax assessment of Field's property in Saline County, including 9 parcels of land, 14 slaves (not named), and livestock, 4 March 1851.

WITH--another letter dated 1863; and a Field family photo album containing 40 tintypes and cartes-de-visite circa 1865-1880. In the front of the album is a later note regarding Quincy Adams Thompson (1829-1862), the father of Field's daughter-in-law Leona Thompson Field, "who died in a Northern prison in St. Louis (he was a Confederate)."