?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 10,000 - $ 15,000
JOHN WASHINGTON'S SLAVE WRITES TO HIM (SLAVERY AND ABOLITION--MOUNT VERNON.) FORD, WEST. Autograph Letter Signed to George Washington's grandnephew John Augustine Washington. Single folio leaf, folded to form four pages, written on two sides with integral address and sealing wax seal on the reverse Np, September 6, 1844
an exceptional letter from one of the washington family's freed and most trusted servants. West Ford was born in 1784 or 1785 on the Bushfield Plantation in Westmoreland County, Virginia to Venus, a mulatto slave woman owned by George Washington's brother, John Augustine Washington and his wife, Hannah. According to Ford oral history, Venus told her mistress Hannah that George Washington was her child's father. Historians dispute this [not surprisingly], suggesting that one of Washington's nephews may have fathered the boy. West was freed in 1806, and to celebrate the event, an artist was summoned to paint Ford's image. As a result we know more or less how he appeared at age twenty-one. In this letter to his old master, West writes 'I am very sorry to say to you that we have had a great deal of sickness. Jesse Clark was take[n] the 3 day of the month. He was crazy as could be. He did not know any person. I had to send for Doctor Powell. After I thought what was the cause of his being in the way he was, I had gave him a puke (probably an emetic) He came to his speech and before the doctor came. He are quite sick yet. I have not received any letter from you but thought it necessary that I should write to let you know how your businesses were going on at Mt Vernon. Jim Mitchell [an old Washington family slave since the age of 14--see lot #xxxxxx for a carte de visite photograph of Mitchell] have been laid up and also July Hannah yet cousin Ed but has not been able to do any thin scarcely little. Andrew still remain sick. I have made two or three attempts to the breaking up and have not been able to break more than acre. I did not attend to your orders as to clearing the piece of land that we were following. [I] has done that and are now clearing. I have to commence cutting tops and agetting [?] fodder. I have not myself seen a well day since you left. I am afraid that it seems likely to be very sick[ly] but are in hopes this letter may find you and all of the family in good health. The servants desire to be remembered to you and all the family. Your humble servant, West Ford, Mt. Vernon.'
