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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]

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]

Title: The first steamboat on the Missouri
Description: Album page with pre-printed lithographic border containing a drawing and unattributed poem about the first steamboat on the Missouri from the 1838 edition of "The Token and Atlantic Souvenir." Drawing is after Joseph Andrew's engraving of the work by painter John Gadsby Chapman. Depicts two Native American men on a rock, one seated, and portrayed with a forlorn expression, and the other standing with their arms raised in an anguished pose, watching a steamboat in the distance. Poem, "The Indian's Farewell to the Missouri, on seeing the First Steamboat on its Waters," addresses the power of the white man and the steamboat as a harbinger of his usurpation of Native American territories., Title from album page., Date from album page., LCP exhibit catalogue: African American Miscellany p. 45., RVCDC, Description revised 2022., Douglass, an African American artist and early photographer, was an active member of the Philadelphia anti-slavery and civil rights movement.
Creator: Douglass, Robert M. J., 1809-1887, artist
Date: September 25, 1841
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department Martina Dickerson album [13859.Q.70]

Title: A mark of friendship's pleasing power
Description: Album page with embossed border and containing a drawing depicting a bunch of flowers above a four-line sentimental poem about friendship and rememberance. Flowers include a rose. Other flowers are depicted in the colors of orange, red, and violet. Image also includes a stem and leaves., Title from manuscript verse., Probably by civil rights activist and educator Ada Howell Hinton who founded a school in 1849. Hinton was daughter of Philadelphia African American elite community member, barber, perfumer, and abolitionist Frederick Augustus Hinton., Contains four lines of verse: A mark of friendship pleasing power,/In this small trifle see/And sometimes in a lonely hour,/View it and think of me., RVCDC, Description revised 2022.
Date: ca. 1840
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department Martina Dickerson album [13859.Q.73]

Title: The Wife. By Washington Irving
Description: Album page containing an ornately calligraphed transcription of an excerpt from the Irving sketch in "The Sketch Book of Geoffery Crayon, Gent" about the wife as a helpmate to her husband. The sketch first published in 1816 was widely reprinted in periodicals during the 1830s, including in "The Ladies Garland" in 1838. Transcription contains multiple styles of handwriting and is enclosed within a border comrpised of swirls., Title from item., Date from item., Transcription of calligraphic text: AS THE VINE WHICH HAS/ long twined its graceful/foliage about the oak and/ been lifted by it in sunshine will when/ THE HARDY PLANT IS RIFTED/ By the thunderbolt cling round it with its caressing tendrils and bind up its shattered boughs so/BEAUTIFULLY so it is ORDERED BY/ PROVIDENCE/ THAT WOMAN who is the mere DEPENDENT/ And ornament of man in his happier hours should be his stay and solace when/ SMITTEN WITH SUDDEN/ calamity WINDING herself INTO the rugged/ recesses of his nature tenderly/ supporting the drooping head/ and binding up/ THE BROKEN HEART, RVCDC, Description revised 2022., Access points revised 2022., Reason, born in New York and one of the few known 19th-century Black engravers and lithographers, was also an anti-slavery and voting rights activist. He spent much of his career, which began when he was a teen in the 1830s in New York, before relocating to Cleveland in the late 1860s.
Creator: Reason, Patrick Henry, 1816-1898, artist
Date: [January 1839]
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department Amy Matilda Cassey album [P.9764.25]

Title: "I love a flower!"
Description: Album page containing a drawing of a wild pink rose above eight lines of allegorical verse about the beauty of flowers. Shows the rose with a stem, five green leaves surrounding the petals, and two buds., Title from manuscript verse., Date inferred from complementary entries in album., Contains eight lines of verse: I love a flower! it ever brings/ A warmth of feeling to my heart,/ Unlike those gay and gilded things/ That flatter coldly, coldly part./ But flowers! – Oh they are eloquent/ They speak when lips would still be dumb/ When by the hand of friendship sent,/ Her price interpreters they come., RVCDC, Description revised 2022., Access points revised 2022., Douglass, was an artist, prominent Quaker member of the Philadelphia African American elite community, educator, and anti-slavery activist.
Creator: Douglass, S. M. (Sarah Mapps), 1806-1882, artist
Date: [ca. 1833]
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department Amy Matilda Cassey album [P.9764.9]

Title: "Forget me not!"
Description: Album page containing a drawing of a stem of blue forget-me-nots above a poem about remembrance. Shows the stem with mutiple flowers and leaves., Title from manuscript verse., Date from item., Probably by Margaretta or Mary Forten, civil rights activists and members of the multiracial Pennsylvania Female Anti-Slavery Society. The women were the daughters of Philadelphia African American entrepreneur and abolitionist James Forten and abolitionist Charlotte Vandine Forten, Contains lines of verse: Forget me not”!—how sweet the token,/ When early hours have faded long,/ And hopes as well as hearts are broken,/ To know they still exist in song!/ Thus, may the exile fondly dream of/ Many a dear and transie[n]t ray/ And watchful memory catch a gleam/ Each colouring of a by-gone day. What tho the wave with ceaseless motion/ Protracts the union of o’er lot:—/ Our Hope’s the rock, which stems Time’s ocean,/ Our Love’s the flower, “Forget Me Not.” Excerpt adapted from poem by William G. Simms Jr., “The ‘Forget Me Not,’” in Early Lays (Charleston, South Carolina: A. E. Miller, 1827)., Manuscript of "Philadelphia" outlined with dots., Manuscript numbers for year "1834" formed with dots., RVCDC, Description revised 2022., Access points revised 2022.
Date: [1834]
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department Amy Matilda Cassey album [P.9764.14]

Title: "Long long be thy heart with your memory fill'd..."
Description: Album page containing a drawing of a white vase of flowers on a square-shaped base and above a poem about memory and remembrance. Flowers depicted are of various kinds and include roses. They are long-stemmed, have leaves, and are in colors of pink, red, yellow, white and blue., Title from manuscript verse., Date inferred from complementary entries in album., Contains four lines of verse: Long, long be my heart with your memory fill’d!—/Like the vase in which roses have once been distill’d—/ You may break, you may ruin the vase if you will;/ But the scent of the roses will hang round it still., RVCDC, Description revised 2022., Access points revised 2022., Forten, was a civil rights activist, founding member of the multiracial Pennsylvania Female Anti-Slavery Society, and educator. She was the daughter of Philadelphia African American entrepreneur and abolitionist James Forten and abolitionist Charlotte Vandine Forten.
Creator: Forten, Margaretta, 1806-1875, artist
Date: [ca. 1834]
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department Amy Matilda Cassey album [P.9764.16]

Title: No marvel woman should love flowers
Description: Album page containing a drawing of coupled red and blue flowers above six lines of allegorical verse about unappreciated beauty. Shows the red camellia with fluffy stamens below three, five-petal blue flowers, possibly forget-me-nots. The flowers are also depicted with buds, leaves, and stems. The stem of the red flower contains thorns., Title from manuscript verse., Date inferred from complementary entries in album., Contains six lines of verse: No marvel woman should love flowers, they bear/ So much of fanciful similitude/ To her own history; like herself repaying/ With such sweet interest all the cherishing/ That calls their beauty or their sweetness forth;/ And like her too—dying beneath neglect. Verse from a poem by English writer Letitia Elizabeth Landon that was frequently published, including in the Ladies’ Miscellany (Salem, Mass., April 7, 1830)., RVCDC, Description revised 2022., Access points revised 2022., Douglass, was an artist, prominent Quaker member of the Philadelphia African American elite community, educator, and anti-slavery activist.
Creator: Douglass, S. M. (Sarah Mapps), 1806-1882, artist
Date: [ca. 1833]
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department Amy Matilda Cassey album [P.9764.24]

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