Beschreibung
Original printed receipt. Dates, names, and fees completed in manuscript. Docketed on verso: "f 152 - Cook & Steward's Board." 7½" x 11½". Old folds, slight fading of manuscript portions, still easily readable and well-preserved, near fine. An unexpected record of African-American expatriate entrepreneurship, and direct documentation of the involvement of free Blacks in the antebellum maritime trades. We have been unable to trace the precise identity of either the Littleton Williams or the Mary Williams whose signature appears on this receipt, but from context we think it likely they were African-American entrepreneurs, free people of color or formerly enslaved individuals, who having found safe harbor in the port of Le Havre established one of the few independent livings available to them. That their boarding house catered exclusively to people of color suggests that France in 1858, though long free of slavery, retained the racist trappings of colonialism. It would appear that at the time of this voyage, the ship *George West*, owned by George Graves, Jr. of Newburyport, was engaged in the cotton trade between New Orleans and Liverpool. We find brief narrative references to the ship in two early 20th Century works: "The ship George West, Capt. Robert Crouch.sailed from home port for New Orleans in 1855. They were detained a long time at New Orleans. Cotton speculation was active among ship-masters.finally the vessel sailed with a drunken crew for Liverpool.and returned to Philadelphia with a cargo of railroad iron and passengers. ." Five years later, we find her in the East India trade, returning to Falmouth in the Fall of 1862, at which point she sailed for Liverpool to avoid being attacked by Confederate cruisers. She was sold to British owners in 1862, probably for scrap (see: Cutter, *Genealogical and Personal Memoirs Relating to the Families of Boston and Eastern Massachusetts*, v.III, 1908; and Lindsey, *Old Marblehead Sea Captains and the Ships in Which They Sailed*, 1915, p.83). A most unusual document, and a potential portal into multiple avenues of research, not least the question of the extent of African-American entrepreneurship on the Continent prior to the Civil War. Based on our cursory research, this appears to be a mostly unexplored topic; but given the known extensive participation of free Blacks in the antebellum maritime trades it is reasonable to conclude that Littleton Williams, whoever he may have been, was not the first nor the only African-American to seek self-determination in the relatively tolerant atmosphere of continental Europe. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 534277
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