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Title: A conservative philospher
Description: Crayon's "conservative philosopher" is a Virginia boot-black named Billy Devilburg, whose tendency to philosophize about boots and social class earned him this title. Devilburg is shown in his shop, where, surrounded by boots, he holds forth on this topic. According to Crayon, Devilburg was "a specimen of his race that merited more than a casual glance." As he wrote, "time had made strong marks upon his face, but good temper and full feeding had kept out the petty wrinkles which indicate decrepitude. His broad forehead, fringed with grizzled wool, imparted an air of dignity to his countenance, his one eye beamed with honesty, while his quiet, deferential manner inspired the respect it tendered." (p. 178), Illustration in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, vol. 12, no. 68 (January 1856), p. 178., Engraving accompanies Porte Crayon's [i.e., David Hunter Srother's] "Virginia Illustrated. Adventures of Porte Crayon and his Cousins," which was published in book form in 1857. See David Hunter Strother, Virginia Illustrated (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1857)., Fels Afro-Americana Image Project, Work Scenes.
Date: [January 1856]
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Books & Other Texts | Rare Per H 9 62992.O v 12 n 68 January 1856 p 178, https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/Islandora%3A2871

Title: The banks of the River James
Description: Image is set Lynchburg, Virginia, where a party of African American men rest on the bank of the River James. A row-boat and two oars are visible in the left foreground; a wagon occupies the background., Illustration in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, vol. 12, no. 68 (January 1856), p. 174., Engraving accompanies Porte Crayon's [i.e., David Hunter Srother's] "Virginia Illustrated. Adventures of Porte Crayon and his Cousins," which was published in book form in 1857. See David Hunter Strother, Virginia Illustrated (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1857)., Fels Afro-Americana Image Project, Scenes from Slave Life.
Date: [January 1856]
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Books & Other Texts | Rare Per H 9 62992.O v 12 n 68 January 1856 p 174, https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/Islandora%3A2869

Title: Tobacco plantation
Description: Engraving accompanies the lead article "The History and Mystery of Tobacco." It is set on a tobacco plantation, and shows a large field of tobacco plants, as well as two surrounding buildings. In the foreground, three black men use hoes to break up the soil and pull the grass around the growing plants., Illustration in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, vol. 11, no. 61 (June 1855), p. 8., Fels Afro-Americana Image Project, Work Scenes.
Date: [June 1855]
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Books & Other Texts | Rare Per H 9 62992.O v 11 n 61 June 1855 p 8, https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/Islandora%3A2867

Title: Picking cotton
Description: Engraving is one of several accompanying T.B. Thorpe's article "Cotton and its Cultivation." It shows several black field hands picking cotton, and corresponds with the following passage: "The season of cotton picking commences in the latter part of July, and continues without intermission to the Christmas holidays. The work is not heavy, but becomes tedious from its sameness. The field hands are each supplied with a basket and a bag. The basket is left at the head of the 'cotton-rows;' the bag is suspended from the 'picker's' neck by a strap, and is used to hold the cotton as it is taken from the boll. When the bag is filled it is emptied into the basket, and this routine is continued through the day." (p. 455), Illustration in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, vol. 8, no. 46 (March 1854), p. 456., Fels Afro-Americana Image Project, Work Scenes.
Creator: Orr, John William, 1815-1887, engraver
Date: [January 1854]
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Books & Other Texts | Rare Per H 9 62992.O v 8 n 46 March 1854 p 456, https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/Islandora%3A2864

Title: Carrying cotton to the gin
Description: Engraving is one of several accompanying T.B. Thorpe's article "Cotton and its Cultivation." It shows seven African American plantation hands walking with large baskets of cotton on their heads. The men and women walk in a perfect line, leaving three or four paces between them. The illustration corresponds with the following passage, "Among the most characteristic scenes of plantation life is the returning of the hands at nightfall from the field, with their well-filled baskets of cotton upon their heads. Falling unconsciously "into line," the stoutest leading the way, they move along in the dim twilight of a winter day with the quietness of spirits rather than human beings." (p. 455-56), Illustration in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, vol. 8, no. 46 (March 1854), p. 457., Fels Afro-Americana Image Project, Work Scenes.
Creator: Orr, John William, 1815-1887, engraver
Date: [January 1854]
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Books & Other Texts | Rare Per H 9 62992.O v 8 n 46 March 1854 p 457, https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/Islandora%3A2865

Title: Cotton gin -- Ginning cotton
Description: Engraving is one of several accompanying T.B. Thorpe's article "Cotton and its Cultivation." Set in a gin-house, it shows two plantation hands working at a cotton gin. While a man pushes cotton out of the "packing-room" (a loft space) and down a chute, a woman uses a rake-like tool to guide it through the gin. Standing nearby, a woman with a bucket on her head watches the process, and a man peeks into the gin-house through an open window. Two large baskets used for carrying cotton can be seen in the left foreground., Illustration in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, vol. 8, no. 46 (March 1854), p. 459., Fels Afro-Americana Image Project, Work Scenes.
Date: [January 1854]
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Books & Other Texts | Rare Per H 9 62992.O v 8 n 46 March 1854 p 459, https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/Islandora%3A2866

Title: [African weaver]
Description: Report includes William Singleton's "Account of a Visit to the Gambia and Sierra Leone," in which he described the weaver featured in the frontispiece. Recalling his arrival in Tankrowall (Gambia), Singleton wrote, "The African loom here took my attention; and here too I first saw a female use the distaff: she was spinning cotton, and frequently dipped her finger into a white powder, prepared from burnt bones." (p. 30) As the frontispiece attests, the weaver's loom was sheltered, and she sat on the ground as she worked. A similar loom is depicted in René Claude Geoffroy de Villeneuve's L'Afrique, ou histoire, moeurs, usages et coutumes des africains: le Sénégal (Paris: 1814), vol. 4, p. 180., Frontispiece for the London Yearly Meeting's Report of the Committee Managing a Fund Raised by Some Friends for the Purpose of Promoting African Instruction . . . (London: Printed by Harvey, Darton, and Co., 55, Gracechurch-Street, 1822)., Caption below the image read: "The plate presented to the work by some friends to the cause.", Fels Afro-Americana Image Project, Africa: Images, Maps, and Geography.
Date: [1822]
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Books & Other Texts | Rare U Afri Lond Yea Meet 5593.O frontispiece, https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/Islandora%3A2927

Title: Tuning up
Description: Engraving is one of several accompanying the story "A Winter in the South." It is set in Tennesse, and shows three black musicians, who, at the request of their master, played for him and his family on Christmas Day. According to the story's unnamed author, the master's rhetorical question " . . . because we have the misfortune to be white, shall we never forget our cares and troubles?" was followed by the decisive order, "Bring in the fiddlers!" As the author then wrote, "In came the joyful musicians, grinning from ear to ear, and bowing until they sweep the floor with their greasy hats, anticipating the extra drams and half-dollars for their holiday spendings." (p. 295) In the illustration, the musicians are show with their instruments (fiddles and a tamborine). The portrayal of their facial features adheres to negative racial stereotypes., Illustration in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, vol. 17, no. 99 (August 1858), p. 295., Fels Afro-Americana Image Project, Scenes from Daily Life.
Date: [August 1858]
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Books & Other Texts | Rare Per H 9 62992.O v 17 n 99 August 1858 p 295, https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/Islandora%3A2875

Title: Les Maures poursuivant les Nègres pour les faires Esclaves
Description: Riding on horseback and armed with swords, Moorish slave-catchers raid a village in search of slaves. As the village burns in the background, a slave-catcher pursues a fleeing man., Plate 31 in Jean Baptiste Léonard Durand's Atlas pour servir au Voyage du Sénégal (Paris: Dentu, 1807)., Fels Afro-Americana Image Project, Scenes from Slave Life.
Creator: Demonchy, engraver
Date: [1807]
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Books & Other Texts | Rare *U Afri Dur 13032.Q plate 31, https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/Islandora%3A2903

Title: A Negro hung alive by the ribs to a gallows
Description: Engraving was done after one of John Gabriel Stedman's own drawings; it illustrates an incident that he learned of during his travels in Surinam. According to Stedman, a "decent looking man" explained to him, "Not long ago, . . . I saw a black man suspended alive from a gallows, by the ribs, between which, with a knife, was first made an incision, and then clinched an iron hook with a chain; in this manner he kept alive three days, hanging with his head and feet downwards, and catching with his tongue the drops of water (it being the rainy season) that were flowing down his bloated breast." (vol. 1, p. 109), Plate XI in John Gabriel Stedman's Narrative, of a five year's expedition, against the revolted Negroes of Surinam, in Guiana, on the wild coast of South America; from the year 1772 to 1777 (London: Printed for J. Johnson, St. Paul's Church Yard, & J. Edwards, Pall Mall, 1796), vol. 1, p. 110., Fels Afro-Americana Image Project, Punishment Scenes.
Creator: Blake, William, 1757-1827, engraver
Date: Dec. 1, 1792
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Books & Other Texts | Rare Am 1796 Sted 755.Q v 1 p 110, https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/Islandora%3A2694

Title: The execution of breaking on the rack
Description: Engraving was done after one of John Gabriel Stedman's own drawings; it records an incident that he witnessed during his travels in Surinam. According to Stedman, the man on the rack was sentenced to death for having shot and killed an overseer. As Stedman wrote, "Informed of the dreadful sentence, he composedly laid himself down on his back on a strong cross, on which, with arms and legs expanded, he was fastened by ropes; the executioner, also a black man, having now with a hatchet chopped off his left hand, next took up a heavy iron bar, with which, by repeated blows, he broke his bones to shivers, till the marrow, blood, and splinters flew about the field; but the prisoner never uttered a groan nor a sigh." (vol. 2, p. 295), Plate LXXI in John Gabriel Stedman's Narrative, of a five year's expedition, against the revolted Negroes of Surinam, in Guiana, on the wild coast of South America; from the year 1772 to 1777 (London: Printed for J. Johnson, St. Paul's Church Yard, & J. Edwards, Pall Mall, 1796), vol. II, p. 296., Fels Afro-Americana Image Project, Punishment Scenes.
Date: Dec. 2, 1792
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Books & Other Texts | Rare Am 1796 Sted 755.Q v 2 p 296, https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/Islandora%3A2702

Title: The mode of training blood hounds in St. Domingo and of exercising them by Chasseurs
Description: Featuring a model of a black man and a Spanish Chasseur in typical dress, the engraving helps shows how Spanish colonizers in St. Domingo trained blood-hounds to track and kill runaway slaves. As Rainsford explained, "With respect to the dogs their general mode of rearing was latterly in the following manner. From the time of their being taken from the dam, they were confined in a sort of kennel, or cage, where they were but sparingly fed upon small quantities of the blood of different animals. As they approached maturity, their keepers procured a figure roughly formed as a negro in wicker work, in the body of which were contained the blood and entails of beasts. This was exhibited before an upper part of the cage, and the food occasionally exposed as a temptation, which attracted the attention of the dogs to it as a source of the food they wanted. This was repeated often, so that the animals with rodoubled ferocity struggled against their confinement while in proportion to their impatience the figure was brought nearer, though yet out of their reach, and their food decreased, till at the last extremity of desperation, the keeper resigned the figure, well charged with the nauseous food before described, to their wishes. While they gorged themselves with the dreadful met, he and his colleagues caressed and encouraged them. By these means the whites ingratiated themselves so much with the animals, as to produce an effect directly opposite to that perceivable in them towards the black figure; . . . ." (p. 426-27)., Plate in Marcus Rainsford's Historical Account of the Black Empire of Hayti: comprehending a view of the principal transactions in the revolution of Saint Domingo; with its antient and modern state (London: Albion press printed: published by James Cundee, Ivy-Lane, Paternoster-Row; and sold by C. Chapple, Pall Mall, 1805), p. 422., Fels Afro-Americana Image Project, Resistance.
Creator: Barlow, J., engraver
Date: 1805
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Books & Other Texts | Rare Am 1805 Rains 1416.Q p 422, https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/Islandora%3A2708

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