Illustration accompanies Miss Harrintgon's (allegedly true) account of her capture by two blacks in the parish of Concordia, Louisiana in 1842. Miss Harrington (standing in the middle) was kidnapped by two black men, Enoch and Joseph (seen at right), who forced their way into her home and murdered her father, Noah Harrington. Thereafter, the two men entered the home of Mr. George Todd, whom they also killed, and then proceeded to take his wife and seven-month old infant into captivity. (Mother and child are seen at left). With a young mulatto girl named Nelly Predello in tow, the two men led Miss Harrington, Mrs. Eliza Todd, and her child into a swampy forest, where they were held for six weeks. As Miss Harrington's narrative emphasizes, Nelly had originally thought that she would be aiding the two men in some sort of simple escape attempt, and she was dismayed to discover the true nature of their murderous plot. In this scene, Nelly protects the two women from their captors. As Miss Harrington wrote, whenever Nelly felt their lives jeopardized, she "would drop on her knees and beg of the blacks to desist, and in the meantime assuring them, 'that if the lives of the two unfortunate captives were thus to be cowardly sacrificed, their bullets would have first to pass through her body, before she would willingly permit them to reach those of the unfortunate victims!'" Eventually, Nelly aided in the women's rescue by a group of white men., Frontispiece for Miss Harrington's Narrative of the Barbarous Treatment of Two Unfortunate Females (New York: Printed for the publishers, 1842)., Fels Afro-Americana Image Project, Resistance.
Date
[1842]
Location
Library Company of Philadelphia | Books & Other Texts | Rare Am 1842 Harr 78297.O frontispiece, https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/Islandora%3A2776
