Jun 21, 2016 - Sale 2420

Sale 2420 - Lot 277

Price Realized: $ 1,875
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
(SLAVERY AND ABOLITION.) Lewis, Lawrence. Washington's nephew issues a power of attorney to retrieve two escaped slaves. Document Signed by Lewis and others, 4 pages, 9 1/2 x 7 3/4 inches, on one folding sheet; minimal wear, folds; embossed Frederick County seal. Frederick County, VA, 10 June 1831
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An interesting slave document from one of George Washington's closest associates. Lawrence Lewis (1767-1839) was the son of George Washington's sister, served as Washington's personal secretary from 1797 to 1799, married Washington's step-granddaughter Eleanor Custis, and received part of the Mount Vernon estate as a wedding gift. Washington shared antislavery thoughts with Lewis in a well-known 4 August 1797 letter: "I wish from my soul that the Legislature of this State could see the policy of a gradual Abolition of Slavery; It would prevt. much further mischief." Despite these sentiments, Lewis remained a slaveholder long after his mentor's death. One modern source describes him as "a harsh and trying man who sold his slaves South despite considerable popular pressure" (Elizabeth Brown Pryor, Reading the Man, page 526).
In this document, Lewis authorizes Thomas Griggs of Jefferson County, VA to act as his agent "to pursue, take, recover, and bring back my negro man, Shadrach, a blacksmith by trade, who absconded from my farm near Battletown . . . and also Arlington, his brother," who had escaped in separate incidents in 1829 and 1830--about the time Lewis had relocated from Mount Vernon to Berryville, VA in northern Virginia. His agent Griggs was a slave trader; the Library of Congress holds his often-reproduced 1835 broadside.