?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 10,000 - $ 15,000
CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN SLAVE-DEALERS Slave dealers' correspondence, consisting of 40 letters and telegrams sent to the slave-dealing houses of Dickinson, Hill and Co. and S. R. Fondren, both of Richmond; sent from various locations in the South; various sizes; condition varies, but generally very good. should be seen. Vp, 1836-62
An exceptionally rich and probably unique archive. The number of letters addressed to S. R. Fondren, including those of his brother and partner who was selling slaves in Mississippi, strongly suggest that at some point the two Fondren brothers had purchased Dickinson, Hill and were operating under that name. This correspondence provides a wealth of information regarding the pricing and treatment of slaves as a commodity, showing how slave-dealers went to great lengths to keep each other aware of current market values and how they maintained prices in their respective geographical areas. Many of these dealers also seem to have enjoyed bragging about their sales or "swaps." A letter from John Hooker of Vicksburg to S. R. Fondren on 18 November 1857, tells him that his brother John had gotten the better of another dealer . . . "[he] has just swapped Clarisy to old Tim Sims for a man and fifty dollars, gutted him alive. Swaps are offering freely [but] no buyers." In another letter from Centerville, VA, of 19 April 1855, A. P. Grigsby makes a rare reference to his "Fancy" slave ("Fancies" were women that dealers kept for their own pleasure), "My Fancy had an increase, a boy though she had a hard time of it. She had two physicians with her, but they are doing pretty well now." In a letter from Vicksburg on 19 November 1857, an agent writes to S. R. Fondren concerning local competition, "If Edwards has done anything with Merrit & Brother they have kept it close, for I have not heard a word of it. I don't believe there is but three traders in town at present . . . Wash Burton is here with twenty-five. I don't know exactly how many Merrit has, about thirty though I think . . . Mr Hooper swapped the girl Sarah which we got from Boyd to Gordon Smith for a woman about thirty years old and got five hundred dollars in the trade. Your brother and Mr. Burton has [sic] a notion of going up the river with about sixty Negroes, thirty men and thirty women . . .," and finishing with a detailed two-page list of all the slaves he has in stock, comprising 29 men and 19 women, with entries such as "Eaton, returned by Wilson," and "Louisa, child got in trade of Mariah," with the house's investment in most of them. Material from slave-dealers is extremely rare, with only single letters generally offered. Archives such as this, containing such detail on the slave business of anti-bellum America, are virtually unknown outside of a few institutions.
Exhibition Hours
Exhibition Hours
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