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

The slippers are clearly of the appropriate style and period. Lynne Zacek Bassett, an independent scholar specializing in historic costumes and textiles, notes that this was “common shape of men’s boudoir slippers from the 1850s to the 1870s,” similar in design to other examples held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and other institutions. Miss Lambert’s Hand-Book of Needlework, a popular work which first appeared in 1842 and went through numerous editions, gives directions for a crocheted slipper with red and white stripes. Bassett’s report is available by request. The slippers are accompanied by other Gideon Welles family papers and photographs which don’t mention the slippers specifically, but help establish the Welles family provenance: a cabinet card portrait of Mary Jane Hale Welles in a funeral dress, said to be sewn and designed by Keckley for the funeral of her son Hubert Gideon Welles in 1862, and again worn at Lincoln’s funeral in 1865, on a Henry Ulke mount from 1866 * Carte-de-visite photograph of a boy said to be Hubert Gideon Welles (1853-1862), on an Ulke mount from 1865 * Cabinet card photograph of Gideon Welles on a Mathew Brady mount * Autograph Letter Signed from Mary Jane Hale Welles (“M.J.W.”) to Gideon, 15 August [1863] * and finally, an Autograph Letter Signed from Secretary Gideon Welles to his son Thomas, discussing the second inaugural: “The inauguration passed off pleasantly and well. There was a great crowd, exceeding any previous one I have ever witnessed at an inauguration,” 5 March 1865. The lot is also accompanied by a signed statement by the consignor.