Mar 30, 2023 - Sale 2631

Sale 2631 - Lot 300

Price Realized: $ 1,375
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
(WOMEN'S HISTORY.) Reward of Merit signed by the famed publisher and lawyer Mary Ann Shadd Cary from her days as a teacher. Illustrated certificate, 2 1/4 x 5 inches, reading "Reward of Merit, Courtesy Commands Esteem," completed in manuscript and signed "Mrs. Mary A.S. Cary" as teacher; vertical fold, mount remnants on verso. [Washington, DC?], circa 1865-1880
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Additional Details

Mary Ann Shadd Cary (1823-1893) was the first Black woman to publish a newspaper in North America, and the second to graduate from law school in the United States. Born into a free family in Wilmington, Delaware, she became active in the Underground Railroad, and moved to Canada in reaction to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, where she launched a newspaper called the Provincial Freeman in 1853.

This certificate was signed by Cary during her time as a school teacher, at some point after her 1856 marriage to Thomas Cary in Toronto. He died soon afterwards, and she returned to the United States in 1860. She resumed teaching shortly after the Civil War, briefly in Wilmington, DE and then in Washington, DC through 1880. This certificate was issued as a reward to a student named Yancy Washington. Certificates like this were a common motivational tool for 19th century teachers, although we have traced no other examples of the present design.

Cary's signature evolved substantially over the course of her life, but this signature is a close match for her 3 March 1871 letter to Oliver O. Howard at Bowdoin College. We are aware of no other examples of her signature at auction.