A Florida captivity narrative - photo 1
A Florida captivity narrative - photo 2

A Florida captivity narrative

Lot 44
07.12.2022 10:00UTC -05:00
Classic
Starting price
$ 4 000
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUSA, New York
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The auction is completed. No bids can be placed anymore.
Archive
ID 859623
Lot 44 | A Florida captivity narrative
Estimate value
$ 5 000 – 8 000
DICKINSON CAPTIVITITY NARRATIVE, BARROW, Robert — SAUNDERSON, Timothy. Autograph fair copy, Gringston Garth, 27 June 1740 of a letter from Robert Barrow to his wife Margaret Barrow, "From Ashley River", [Charleston,] South Carolina, 23 February 1696/7.

Eight pages, 196 x 156mm formerly bound along left margin (mild uneven toning, marginal wear occasionally affecting letters of text).

Robert Barrow's telling of the famous Dickinson captivity narrative. A prominent Quaker missionary, Barrow was part of a voyage led by Jonathan Dickinson, a Jamaican-born Quaker merchant, bound from Kingston for Philadelphia only to run aground on the east coast of Florida where they were held captive on several occasions by the indigenous peoples of the region. Dickinson's narrative of their captivities, releases and subsequent rescue by the Spanish was published in 1699 Philadelphia under the title, God's Protecting Providence. The volume proved a best seller, with 2,000 copies printed in the first year of its publication alone. Barrow wrote his account of the party's ordeal after their rescue by the Spanish governor of St. Augustine who provided the party with canoes to reach the English settlements in South Carolina. There, with the other survivors of the ordeal, Barrow slowly recuperated, sending news to his wife while suffering from "a Flux," until he was able to undertake the journey to Philadelphia. Barrow's account of the ordeal while briefer than Dickinson's, is more immediate, written just as the party had reached the first English settlement they had seen in nearly six months. He tells of their captivity in "ye Hands … savage Indians, and Barbarians, known formerly to be men eatrs; they look upon us with arrogantly … and we Expected Every moment to be Murthered …" After narrating the circumstances of their various captivates and releases, Barrow writes that the party was "conveyed to ye next town and some of those Indians gave us matts to sitt upon, and gave us fish to Eat," a welcome respite from their ordeal, described in vivid detail by Barrow: "we had no food for 3 days, Except Berries, and wild grapes, and went Naked, without Hat, Cap, Shirt, Coat or Shooes, 7 weeks time … ye sun being hot scoring in the days and sometimes Rain, and great dews, fill in ye Nights, which made cold mornings, we being sore punished w[i]th muskettoes, Flies, And allso we were nasty and Lousy in our Heads … mostly lying on ye ground … and ye Earth is full of flies and Creeping things, inso much that I got no sleep." When Barrow had recuperated sufficiently, he undertook a fourteen day voyage to Philadelphia where he died within days of his arrival in March 1696/7. (Dickinson, God's Protecting Providence… 89.) Provenance: Parke-Bernet, 11 February 1941, lot 131 – Eberstadt (acquisition, 1952) – Frank T. Siebert (his sale, Sotheby's, New York, 28 October 1999, lot 962).
Place of origin:United Kingdom
Auction house category:Letters, documents and manuscripts
Address of auction CHRISTIE'S
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