Sep 30, 2021 - Sale 2580

Sale 2580 - Lot 229

Price Realized: $ 2,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
(TENNESSEE.) Francis Sappington. Letter describing war with the Cherokees and the Muscle Shoals Massacre. Autograph Letter Signed to grandmother Frances Brown Sappington (1723-1816) of Elk Ridge, MD. 2 pages, 9 1/4 x 7 1/2 inches, plus integral address leaf (no postal markings); minor wear, large seal tear on address leaf. [Nashville?], TN, 12 August 1794
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Additional Details

This letter describes the ongoing battles between Cherokees and settlers on the Tennessee frontier, including the 9 June 1794 Muscle Shoals Massacre: "Our beautiful western country . . . is a fine one could we but obtain peace, but I fear that blessing is not intended for us yet. The Indians continue to kill and plunder this country as usual. We now daily expect three or four hundred men to come and join us from Kentuck. If [they do?], we shall raise as many here, go and destroy the Cherokee towns and if we do but breake them up, I think we shall have a lasting peace. As for to pretend to treat with them is out of the question. They treat with us, today get presents, guns and amunition, tomorrow they turn round and kill with those very presents. A boat passing from Holston to Natchez with 32 souls on board last June was taken at the Mussel Shouls on the Tennesee River by the Cherokees. The negroes were made prisoners, the whites were slaughtered in a most barberous manner."

The author also reports on his uncle Dr. John Sappington, who had somehow lost a small inheritance: "He has by some means spent it all & how, I can hardly tell you. He neither wore nor drank it, but labourd hard while people cheated him out of it, and he not being well acquainted with mankind they took advantage on every side. He likewise made some bad bargains. . . . The last accounts we had of him, he was at a place called Oppalusa in the Spanish dominions [Opelousas, LA]. People there say he is making money by physic."

He also offers updates on the family's enslaved people: "Father owns Tobias, a gentleman by the name of Molloy owns Billy who lives about half a mile from us. Billy has four children by Rachel, two girls and two boys. . . . The Negroes all give their kindest love to you and your people."

The author was likely Francis Boyce Sappington (1781-1800), son of Dr. Mark Brown Sappington (1746-1803) of Nashville, then a small settlement of about 300 (see lots 42, 159, and 160 for related papers).