Original & selected poetry &c. [graphic] / Amy Matilda Cassey.
Title
Original & selected poetry &c
Description
Friendship album of Amy Matilda Cassey, a middle-class African American woman active in the antislavery 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 rustic, residential scene, possibly in New York. Contributors, including many women from the antebellum African American elite community, are prestigious reformers and abolitionists active in the anti-slavery, scholarly, educational, 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 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 Rebecca Buffum, Susan C. Wright, and sisters Hannah L. Stickney and Mary T. Stickney, and sisters Mary Forten (p.10), Margaretta Forten, and Sarah Forten Purvis, as well as their sister-in-law Mary Virginia Wood Forten (p.22); 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 anti-slavery activist Emily Willson; anti-slavery activists Ann Warren Weston and Elizabeth Le Brun (Stickney) Gunn; 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 probably Lydia A. Bustill and unattributed watercolors and sketches possibly by Amy Matilda Cassey., Title from item., Inclusive range of dates inferred from entries inscribed with dates., Embossed and gilt morocco binding with blue moiré silk doublures., Lib. Company Annual Report 1998, p. 25-35., Research file available at repository., RVCDC, Description revised 2022., Access points revised 2022., Cassey, an abolitionist, temperance and civil rights activist and founding member of the multiracial 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.
Creator
Cassey, Amy Matilda, 1808-1856
Date
[ca. 1833-ca. 1856]
Location
Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department Amy Matilda Cassey album [P.9764]
Original & selected poetry &c. [graphic] / Martina Dickerson.
Title
Original & selected poetry &c
Description
Album belonging to Martina Dickerson, a young middle-class African American Philadelphian, probably created as a pedagogical exercise, with twenty-two contributions dating from 1840 until around 1846. Contains original and transcribed poems, prose, and essays on topics including love, friendship, sympathy, courage, and female refinement. Also includes drawings, primarily of flowers. Identified contributors are mainly Black elite scholars active in the African American anti-slavery and cultural community of mid-19th century Philadelphia., Contains the following contributions: calligraphed title page by abolitionist James Forten, Jr.; prose on "Literature," "The Album," and "The Year" by entrepeneur and abolitionist James Forten, Sr. or his son, James, Jr.; prose entitled "Perserverance" by tailor, abolitionist, and civil rights activist John C. Bowers; prose, sketches, and watercolors by Quaker abolitionist, educator, and artist, Sarah Mapps Douglass; watercolor and transcribed poem, "The First Steamboat on the Missouri," by Sarah's brother, artist, community activist, and abolitionist, Robert Douglass; essay entitled "Sympathy" by William Douglass, pastor and historian of the St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Philadelphia; transcription from Wordsworth's "Excursion" by educator and anti-slavery activist Charles L. Reason; gouache of a bunch of flowers by A.H.H., probably Ada Howell Hinton, an African American educator and anti-slavery activist; and prose, poems, and gouache by Mary M. MacFarland, V.E. Macarty, Y.J. Grice, Rebecca F. Peterson, H.D. Shorter, C.D.R., and J.F.V., Title from item., Inclusive range of dates inferred from entries inscribed with dates., Embossed and gilt morocco binding., Lithograph title page, "Flowers," containing flower illustration hand-colored with gouache and watercolor., Blank album published in London by Wm. & Hy. Rock., Lib. Company. Annual Report 1993, p. 17-25., Research file available at repository., RVCDC, Description revised 2022., Access points revised 2022., Dickerson, a pupil of African American educator Sarah Mapps Douglass, was the daughter of African American activists, Martin and Adelia Dickerson, and step-father Samuel Van Brackle.
Creator
Dickerson, Martina, 1829-1905
Date
[ca. 1840-ca. 1846]
Location
Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department Martina Dickerson album [13859.Q]
Portrait Album of Well-Known 19th-Century African American Men of Philadelphia
Title
[Portrait album of well-known 19th-century African American men of Philadelphia]
Description
Photograph album containing identified portrait photographs, bust-length, half-length, and full-length, of twenty-one prominent Philadelphia African American men. Named sitters in order of inclusion in album include veteran Harmon Richardson attired in a military uniform; educator and activist Octavius Catto; civil rights activist Edwin Chew (son of John and Charlotte Henson Chew); janitor and later undertaker Guy M. Burton with musician Ed[ward] H. Johnson and Terry V. Hall; musician Joseph G. Anderson; Civil War veteran and waiter Taylor Aldridge; Johnson al-Jube holding a basket; laborer Parker T. Smith; Jeremiah V. Hall; George Hall; waiter William I. Lancaster; barber James Keith; caterer Henry Tobias; Cheslea Bass, barber and partner to James Keith, with caterer Andrew F. Stevens; Edwin Lewis; Jas. H. Williams ae.[sic] Rush; Thomas Proctor; and restauranteur/caterer Ja[me]s B. Page. Musicians Edward Johnson and Joseph G. Anderson were members of Francis Johnson's band in the 1830s and 40s., Title supplied by cataloger from label on spine., Date from content and medium of photographs., Cardboard binding with torn spine label inscribed: Portraits of Well Know[n]. Insides of binding covers include scribbles and a pasted partial scrap of a flower., Photographs are loose or attached to album pages within binding., Sitters, and occasionally their profession, identified by manuscript notes on verso of photograph or album page. Some notes include statement "deceased," including for sitters Harmon Richardson, Edwin Chew, Octavius Catto, Edward H. Johnson, Terry V. Hall, Joseph G. Anderson, Johnson al-Jube, George Hall, James H. Williams, and James Page., Mostly unidentified photographers with identified Philadelphia photographers John L. Gihon and Parlor Gallery., Portrait photograph of Octavius Catto reproduced after a circa 1871 portrait photograph taken by African American Philadelphia photographer Gallo W. Cheston and/or Philadelphia photographers Broadbent & Phillips. See "Amy Cohen's Catto the Forgotten Hero" at catto.ushistory.org/. See also Harper's Weekly 15 (October 28, 1871), p. 1005 and a copy of the original portrait at https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_NPG.2006.8. Photograph stamped on verso: Kean Archives, Phila., Portrait photograph of Taylor Aldridge inscribed on verso: Nov. 27 '83., Verso of album page with portrait photograph of Edwin Lewis inscribed: July '83., Verso of album page with portrait photograph of James Page printed: Sharpless Bros. Dry Goods, Chestnut and Eighth Sts. Philadelphia., Purchase 1990., Description revised 2023., Access points revised 2023., Part of digital collections catalog through a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services as administered by the Pennsylvania Department of Education through the Office of the Commonwealth Libraries, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Tom Corbett, Governor, 2013-2014.
Date
[ca. 1865-ca. 1885]
Location
Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department albums [P.9304]