Sale 2471 - Printed & Manuscript African Americana, March 29, 2018

334 c   (RECONSTRUCTION.) Woodworth, Charles L. Letter describing a freedmen’s camp in North Carolina. 8 pages, 8 x 5 inches, on 2 folding sheets; minimal wear. Amherst, MA,August 1865 [250/350] The author spent more than two years in the south as chaplain of the 27th Massachusetts Infantry,often working in freedmen’s camps, and after the war dedicated himself to raising money for the freedmen through the American MissionaryAssociation.This letter was written to an unidentified Sunday School class, asking them to donate to the cause. He describes at length his efforts to distribute clothing inWashington, NC:“The mind never conjured to itself such a mass of living humanity as jostled itself in the long hall around my door. . . . Such a multitude of them were nestled in the shanties & cellars & garrets of the town . . . a ragged, starving populace making merry with suffering, & counting no price too great to pay for freedom . . . weeks in the woods & swamps, making their way to our lines,& all that they may be free.”He describes several of these clothing recipients in detail—a young woman carrying a baby, a pair of orphaned sisters, an old man who proclaimed “I’se old, Massa, I’m worn out, I no be able to work now, I’se had a mighty hard time.” 335 335 c   (RECONSTRUCTION.) Marriage certificate issued to a Georgia freedman and freedwoman a year after the war. Partially-printed document completed in manuscript, 10 x 8 inches; moderate wear, soiling and docketing on verso. Talbot County, GA, 15 September 1866 [1,000/1,500] The marriage certificate of Cicero Vaughn and Ellen Gorman, signed by county official Marion Bethune and L.A. Brown, minister of the gospel. For many, emancipation offered the opportunity to have existing marriages formally recognized by church and state.