(TRAVEL) White Fred Letter written on a steamboat trip down

Sale 2486 - Lot 393

Price Realized: $ 938

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

Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900

(TRAVEL.) White, Fred. Letter written on a steamboat trip down the Mississippi River. Autograph Letter Signed to his father Ivers White of Ashburnham, MA. 12 pages, 8 x 5 1/4 inches, on 4 folding sheets; folds, minimal wear. With original stamped and postmarked envelope from a hotel in Dubuque. Winona, MN and Dubuque, IA, 4 to 7 November 1866

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The author William Frederick "Fred" White (born 1834) was an itinerant sign painter pursuing work in the towns along the Mississippi River. Here he describes a journey aboard the steamboat War Eagle from St. Paul to Winona, MN, and then on the Northern Belle on to Dubuque, IA. After describing the bustling frontier trading town of St. Paul, the first incident of note is "a characteristic river episode, viz: a darkey song. . . . The boat's crew gathered at the bow and the leader, a fine-looking face & dashing fellow with slouched hat & rug coat, mounted on the capstan in their midst, commenced the refrain . . . at the end of the lines, 'O rock me like a baby, ah yay oh' &c. The peculiar melody, like all they sing, harmonious." His description of an attempted passage by a timber raft at night is particularly vivid: "The lights on the raft like sentinels far & near show like fireflies on a plain. While the little tug is throw up showers of sparks & cinders & flame from her tall chimneys . . . the beacon torches are blazing away with broad red glare, lighting up the leafless trees and black shadowed water." Stopping over in McGregor, IA, he is "invited to join a very select party of young people in dancing at the hotel, and I am favored with good partners, so trip the light fantastic quite late."