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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]