Mar 10, 2020 - Sale 2533

Sale 2533 - Lot 232

Price Realized: $ 281
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 400 - $ 600
(TEXAS.) Papers and photographs of 5 generations of the Hatfield-Dillingham family of Kentucky and Texas. 257 items in one box, 0.4 linear feet (72 manuscript items and 185 photographs); various conditions, many of the photographs bearing later captions. Vp, 1852-1980
Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

This archive begins with Benjamin Alexander Hatfield (1822-1903), a farmer of Hardin County, KY. Among his receipts is one dated 27 August 1864 in which as an estate administrator he "sold to James D. Warde for the sum of fifty dollars a Negro woman belonging to said estate about 57 years old." Benjamin's daughter Mary Catherine Hatfield (1847-1920) married Henry Clay Dillingham and moved circa 1870 to Kentucky Town, TX, up by the Oklahoma border. The family later removed to Sherman, TX and then Commerce, TX. This lot includes several letters written by Mary describing Texas life circa 1871-80. Most dramatically, a 15 March 1874 letter tells of a church building in White Mound, TX which collapsed during a funeral service: "Some one yeld out fier & another yeld out Judgement Day & they all broke through the windows & for the door & they knocked down womin & children, run over them like horses. You never herd such a nois." The collection also includes a few early 20th century items from her son Thomas A. Dillingham (1877-1953) and grandson Harley Clay Dillingham (1900-1965), and concludes with a short family history written in 1980 by Harley's daughter Sara Dillingham Sheldon (1841-2016). The photographs range from a circa 1860s cased tintype onward, with the bulk apparently dating from the early 20th century.