Estimate: $3,000 - $5,000
Auction: September 27, 2023 11:00 AM EDT
A scarce Colonial-era Quaker Meeting Epistle on the “Calamities” suffered by Friends and fellow Subjects during the French and Indian War (1754-63). An historically important report dating from the height of the war, it states: “In former Wars between the English and other Nations, since the Settlement of our Provinces, the Calamities attending them have fallen chiefly on other Places, but now of late they have reached to our Borders; many of our fellow Subjects have suffered on and near our Frontiers, some have been slain in Battle, some killed in their Houses, and some in their Fields, some wounded and left in great Misery, and others separated from their Wives and little Children, who have been carried Captives among the Indians. We have seen Men and Woman who have been Witnesses of these Scenes of Sorrow, and being reduced to Want, have come to our Houses asking Relief.”
Ascribed to the press of Benjamin Franklin and D. Hall by Evans and Hildeburn, but rejected by Miller who suggests it is the work of William Bradford, Jr.