Feb 28, 2005 - Sale 2034

Sale 2034 - Lot 45

Price Realized: $ 805
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
PURVIS, ROBERT; Sr. Autograph Letter Signed, to Wendell Garrison, son of William Lloyd Garrison, regarding his father. 2 pages, 8vo; with the integral blank leaf; on personal letterhead. Philadelphia, 22 May 1885

Additional Details



In this letter Purvis answers a number of questions regarding the old guard abolitionists, James McCrummell, James Forten, Joseph Cassey, Joseph Sharpless, and Frederick Hinton. It was his friendship with James Forten and Robert Purvis that convinced William Lloyd Garrison to abandon his earlier ideas of colonization in favor of emancipation.
Robert Purvis (1810-1898), black abolitionist and civil rights leader, was born in Charleston SC to mixed parents. His father was a white cotton broker and his mother Harriet Judah, though freeborn was the daughter of a slave.