Beschreibung:

Letter from Isabella Graham, founder of the American Sunday School movement, to her parents in England, recounting her meeting with a Seneca Indian chief and his “Squa” and daughter, and other matters Author: Graham, Isabella Marshall Place Published: Fort Niagara [British New York at the Canadian border] Date Published: Feb. 3, 1771 Description: Partial Autograph Letter Signed from “Bell Graham”, as a 29 year-old wife - to her parents in England. 2+ pp. incl. stampless address leaf addressed to her father in the Scottish Lowlands. This was a 4-page conjugate lettersheet, but the bottom ¾ of the 1st leaf is not present. 37.5x22.5 cm (14¾x8¾”) Very rare manuscript remnant of a letter – possibly the only surviving Graham letter - written from a colonial New York military fort by the young Scottish woman who would later found the American Sunday School movement and the first American societies for aiding poor mothers and orphaned children. This original remaining portion of the letter includes Graham's chilling account of meeting with a Seneca Indian chief and his “Squa” and daughter, who had been treated by Graham’s Doctor husband: “I was as kind and made all the court to them I could tho we could not converse but by an interpreter and made the daughters some little presents and the Doctor would not be feed [paid]. Now say this was foolish, habits not with them as with us. Their greatest men are always the poorest and who knows but these little services may one day save our Scalps. There had been several threatenings of an Indian war. Thank God it seems to be quite hushed again. War with civilized nations is nothing to this. They have no mercy nor give any quarters. Man woman and child all meet with the same fate except where they take a liking to particular persons. These they adopt as their children and use them as such…” This partial letter is missing a large portion of the text, as published in the classic biographic memoir, “The Power of Faith”, edited after her death by her daughter, but it does contain some text omitted in the book. Isabella Graham may be called the “founding mother” of early American charitable institutions for assisting the poor of the new nation, especially its women and children. Two years after writing this letter, Graham’s husband, a British Army physician, died, leaving her a penniless widow with four babies. Forced to return to her father’s home in Scotland, she remained in Britain throughout the years of the American Revolution until a Scottish Minister who headed the precursor of Princeton University and signed the Declaration of Independence convinced her to resettle in America. There, in the first years of the 18th century, working with her daughter and the widow of Alexander Hamilton (and, less prominently, a Black woman emancipated from slavery) founded the first Sunday School society, a female-led Society for the Relief of Poor Widows with Small Children and an Orphan Asylum Society – the beginnings of charitable assistance in the new American republic. Condition: Heavy wear and tear, some handwriting at folds marred by stains from old tape and extensive more recent repairs by non-archival tape. Item#: 347134 Headline: “Founding Mother” of American Charity writes from colonial NY