?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000
FORMER SLAVE REQUESTS AND THEN RECEIVES LAND FROM HIS EX-MASTER STEARNS, HARRISON. Two Autograph Letters Signed, to Mrs. William Stearns, wife of his former master, regarding land which was promised him by his master William Stearns. Each one page, 4to. Oxford, MS, 1867; 1868
Harrison Stearns was the slave of William and Mary Jane Ferris Stearns. His master was a member of the faculty at Ole Miss, but left Mississippi during the Civil War. At some point Stearns promised land to his slave. It is in this context that the former slave Harrison writes to his former mistress, "You said something bout conveying my lots to me. I had just write to mass William a little before his death . . . he promest to convey to me as soon as he could be satisfied that the laws of Miss. would allow colored people to hold land. Colored people has the sam right to hold land as the white people." In the same letter he refers to family photographs, "I has got yours and Mass Williams De gara Type but I has not got little Adie."
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