Mar 01, 2012 - Sale 2271

Sale 2271 - Lot 26

Price Realized: $ 660
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 750 - $ 1,000
(SLAVERY AND ABOLITION.) BACON, BENJAMIN C. Statistics of the Colored People of Philadelphia. 16 pages. 8vo, original front wrapper bound in modern marbled paper-covered boards with morocco spine label; title-page with repair to verso; some library stamps and de-accession marks to front wrapper; old stamps from Philadelphia Free Library to title-page and last leaf. Philadelphia: T. Ellwood Chapman, 1856

Additional Details

scarce first edition of the third of four such studies of the free black population of Philadelphia. "It is amazing that successive sociological studies of the Negro community should have been made so early. We know none earlier. The beginning was the four-volume manuscript census compiled by [Benjamin] Bacon and [Charles] Gardner, the accuracy and completeness of which was due to the access the latter, a Philadelphia Negro, had to his own people. The records show that Bacon set out the format and later made the compilation, but Gardner filled in all the names, addresses and other information." Library Company of Philadelphia, Negro History, 1553-1903, #160.