Details
Creator Cassey, Amy Matilda, 1808-1856.
Contributor Bowser, Lydia A.
Buffum, Rebecca Maria Northey, b. 1825
Chew, John.
De Grasse, Isaiah G.
Douglass, Frederick, 1818-1895
Douglass, S. M. (Sarah Mapps), 1806-1882
Forten, Margaretta.
Forten, Mary.
Garrigues, Elizabeth.
Garrison, William Lloyd, 1805-1879
Hopper, Anna W.
M'Kim, J. Miller (James Miller), 1810-1874
Payne, Daniel Alexander, 1811-1893
Purvis, Patrick Henry, b. 1817.
Purvis, Robert, 1810-1893.
Purvis, Sarah Forten, 1811 or 12-1898?
Reason, Charles L.
Smith, James McCune, 1813-1865
Stone, Lucy, 1818-1893
Weston, Ann Warren.
Whipper, William, 1804?-1876
Willson, Emily, b. 1811 or 1812.
Title Original & selected poetry &c. [graphic] / Amy Matilda Cassey.
Date 1833-1856
Physical Description 1 album (76 leaves, 10 drawings): ink, gouache, watercolor, and graphite; 28 x 23 cm. (11 x 9 in.)
Description Friendship album of Amy Matilda Cassey, a middle-class African American woman active in the anti-slavery movement and African American cultural community, containing contributions dating from 1833 until 1856. Contains original and transcribed poems, prose, and essays on topics including slavery, womanhood, religion, friendship, female refinement, death, and love. Also contains drawings, watercolors, and gouaches of flowers and a New York residential street scene. Contributors, many women of the African American elite community, are prestigious reformers and abolitionists active in the anti-slavery, intelligentsia, and cultural community of the antebellum North including Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and Baltimore.
Contains the following contributions: entry by African American abolitionist Frederick Douglass, dated Philadelphia 1850, about his "coarse" contribution in an album of "refined" entries; an original sonnet, "Fallen Bird," and essay, "The Abolition Cause," by anti-slavery activist, author, and editor, William Lloyd Garrison, dated Philadelphia 1833; floral watercolors and calligraphed poems by Philadelphia Quaker activist, educator, and artist Sarah Mapps Douglass; essay, "Moral Reform," dated Philadelphia 1834, by Harrisburg businessman and activist William Whipper; calligraphed version of Washington Irving's poem, "The Wife," by New York African American engraver Patrick Henry Reason dated New York 1839; poem about "Friendship" dated 1837 by anti-slavery activist and gentleman, Robert Purvis; prose on faith penned in 1853 by women right's activist and abolitionist Lucy Stone; floral watercolors, poems and prose on friendship, womanhood, abolition, and remembrance by Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society associates Margaretta Forten, Mary Forten, Sarah Forten Purvis, Rebecca Buffum, Susan C. Wright, and Hannah L. Stickney; memorials to his deceased wife and daughter by Baltimore African Methodist Episcopal Bishop Daniel Alexander Payne written in 1849; and an essay by abolitionist Reverend Isiah George DeGrasse dated Bridgewater 1836. Additional contributions by Baltimore gentlewoman and anti-slavery activist Emily Willson; anti-slavery activist Ann Warren Weston; Philadelphia barber and activist John Chew; abolitionist James Miller M'Kim; University of Glasgow trained activist James McCune Smith; Boston reformer Wendell Phillips; C.L.R., possibly Charles L. Reason, abolitionist and brother of engraver Patrick Henry Reason; A.W.H., possibly Quaker abolitionist Anna W. Hopper, and E.G., possibly Quaker abolitionist Elizabeth Garrigues.
Also includes sketches and a poem by Lydia A. Bowser and unattributed watercolors and sketches possibly by Amy Matilda Cassey.
Notes Embossed and gilt morocco binding with blue moiré silk doublures.
LCP AR (Annual Report) 1998, p. 25-35.
Biographical / historical note Cassey, an abolitionist, temperance and civil rights activist and founding member of the interracial Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society and the African American literary and science society, Gilbert Lyceum, was the daughter of New York black community leader, Reverend Peter Williams. She was the wife of Philadelphia businessman and civil rights activist Joseph Cassey, and later married Boston anti-slavery lecturer Charles Lenox Remond.
Subject African Americans -- Intellectual life -- 19th century.
African American abolitionists -- United States.
African American educators -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia.
Antislavery movements -- United States.
Poetry.
Love.
Friendship.
Women -- United States -- Social conditions.
Femininity.
African Americans -- Religion.
Flowers.
African American women artists -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia.
Genre Albums -- 1830-1860.
Gouaches -- 1830-1850.
Watercolors -- 1830-1850.
Graphite drawings -- 1830-1850.
Embossed bindings (Binding) -- 1830-1840.
Morocco bindings (Binding) -- 1830-1840.
Illustrator Bowser, Lydia A., artist.
Douglass, S.M. (Sarah Mapps), 1806-1882, artist.
Forten, Margaretta, artist.
Location Library Company of Philadelphia| Print Department| Amy Matilda Cassey album [P.9764]
Accession number P.9764