Details
Contributor Printer Childs, Cephas Grier, 1793-1871, publisher.
Printer Childs & Inman, publisher.
Title [Road to Philadelphy] [graphic].
Publisher [Philadelphia: Childs or Childs & Inman]
Date [1830 or 1831]
Extent 1 print: lithograph; 29 x 36 cm.(11.25 x 14.5 in.)
Description Racist caricature simultaneously mocking and condoning the pretentiousness and bigotry of early 19th century Philadelphia Quakers toward their "social inferiors." On a Philadelphia road in front of a small home with an open picket fence and a visitor arriving on horseback, a raggedly dressed dark skinned traveler with buck teeth, possibly an Irishman or African American, asks a rotund Quaker man and his attractive prim and proper daughter, "I say, this isn't the road to Philadelphy, honey, is it?" The father responds indignantly to the "Friend," that he is not only asking a question, but also telling a lie, and of course it is the road.
Notes Attributed to E.W. Clay.
Title and publication information supplied by Wainwright.
Clay, born in Philadelphia, was the most prolific caricaturist of the Jacksonian era. He became well known for his racist popular series, "Life in Philadelphia," published from 1828 until 1832, which mocked upwardly mobile African American Philadelphians as ineptly attempting to imitate the white middle class.
Nancy Reynolds Davison's E.W. Clay: American Political Caricaturist of the Jacksonian Era (PhD. diss., The University of Michigan, 1980), p. 76, 358. (LCP Print Room Uz, A423.O).
LCP holds duplicate trimmed print: W315.
Gift of William Helfand.
Genre Lithographs 1830-1840.
Ethnic stereotypes 1830-1840.
Subject Society of Friends-Caricatures and cartoons.
Social classes--Pennsylvania--Philadelphia.
Irish Americans-Caricatures and cartoons.
African Americans-Caricatures and cartoons.
African Americans-Relations with Quakers.
Is part of Wainwright Philadelphia Lithographs
Is referenced by Wainwright 315.
Has format TMP.objres.4519.jpg
Related resource http://www.lcpgraphics.org/wainwright/W315.htm
Call number Library Company of Philadelphia Print Dept. *W315 [P.9576]
Accession number P.9576