(SLAVERY AND ABOLITION) James A Barr Letter discussing an en

Sale 2562 - Lot 11

Price Realized: $ 845

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 500 - $ 750

(SLAVERY AND ABOLITION.) James A. Barr. Letter discussing an enslaved 34-year-old "boy" who "seems anxious that you buy him." Autograph Letter Signed to Daniel Crawford [of Nixburg, Coosa County, AL?]. 2 pages, 9 3/4 x 7 3/4 inches; folds, lacking integral blank. Wetumpka, AL, 29 November 1854

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"My boy Virgil seems anxious that you buy him. . . . The boy is sound & healthy, a spritly man, the best trained man for business I ever have had, and I think a good carpenter. He can make a good panel doore & good floore, do good shingling, seal & finish of a house well. . . . He says he has allways worked under a boss, but when he com to a pease of timber lade off rong, he could detect it. . . . He is honest & truthfull. . . . Before I bought him he was in the habit of drinking two much. . . . If you want him, you can rite me to Tuskegee, Macon Co., Ala., & I will give him a pass & send him to you at $1500 for him & his tools. . . . I do think he is one of the best servants I ever owned. He will be 34 years old in the spring."

We cannot trace the fate of this master carpenter with certainty, but he might well be the Virgil Ferduson, 51, Black, carpenter, who appears in the 1870 census as a resident of Greenville, AL.