Beschreibung:

Letter to missionary’s wife in China describing mistreatment of a fugitive slave Author: Dunlap, B.J. [Barbara Jarvis] Place: “Lake” [Greenwich, New York] Publisher: Date: Nov. 1, 1852 Description: 3 pp.+ address leaf. Autograph Letter Signed. To her daughter, Mrs. Mary D. Culbertson, Shanghai, China. 2000-word letter, closely written on thin paper with postscripts added by turning the second and third pages upside down and writing between the original lines. This letter by Mary’s widowed mother is full of family news and gossip about their neighbors in upstate New York. A postscript: “Sarah has left Dr. Delaney’s – the Dr. is so cruel to his slaves, she could not stand it to stay any longer than she had hired for. One of his blacks ran away; they hunted him with blood hounds and finally caught him. The Dr. then undertook to make him promise he would not run away again, had him whipped until he feared he would die, then took a hammer and nail and knocked out all his teeth one by one, then took pincers and pulled out his beard, then had him chained to the pump; water pumped on him until he was nearly drowned. It is not awful to think of one human being having power to torture another so?" The 29 year-old woman who received this letter in Qing Dynasty China was the wife of Michael Simpson Culbertson, a worldly missionary who had graduated from West Point in the class of future Civil War General Halleck, spending four years in the Artillery before entering Princeton Theological Seminary; having been ordained and soon after marrying Miss Dunlap, he and his new bride sailed for the Far East. This letter most notably mentions Rev. Amos Boardman Lambert, whose 15 year-old daughter Sarah had apparently left home to work somewhere in the South, possibly as a governess for the children for a Doctor Delany. Sarah had returned to New York, “sick with ague, fever and bilious fever” but was recovering and would soon enroll as a student in Mt. Holyoke, eventually marrying a farmer and settling in Connecticut, while her old friend Mary, in China, would give birth to four children before dying of cholera in Shanghai. One can only imagine the feelings of Mr. and Mrs. Culbertson, as they read this appalling description of inhumanity in their native land, while the “heathen” nation of their missionary labors was itself best by unrest, death and destruction. Lot Amendments Condition: Small marginal chip on the first 2 pages with no significant loss of text. Item number: 318224