This is an anti-slavery album with poetry and floral watercolors created to raise money to fight slavery in America, with a page near the beginning stating the purpose of the album; it reads “This album given by Ladies in England with other rare and valuable articles in aid of the Cause of Anti-Slavery was purchased at a fair held by the Liberty Party in 1847 to raise funds to further the work, publish documents & otherwise spread information of the condition & needs of the slaves in our Southern States, and influence a healthy public sentiment toward their freedom. Its cost was a real sacrifice at that time and therefore rendered doubly valuable to my wife”, signed A F Farrar. We don’t know who A F Farrar was, but he clearly had an anti-slavery mind set.

England abolished slavery in the 1830’s and this album was created to help out the Liberty Party (1840–48), which was the first political party organized in America to oppose the spread of slavery and cut down the power of the Southern states in owning and engaging in slavery.

The album has a beautiful floral watercolor after a poem near the front, with several other poems inside, all hand-written in the Boston and Marblehead areas of Massachusetts between 1849 and 1852; there are two pages that philosophize about good and bad virtues in life, four embossed chromolithograph cards of young girls picking flowers and giving them out and one of a young girl ice skating - probably why this is also called a friendship album - and several pages with embossed borders to encase the chromolithograph cards; there’s a pastoral vignette by M H Middleton, and the album comes with beautiful lacquered covers - one with mother-of-pearl and hand-painted floral decorations on the front and a striking gilt floral decoration on the back - the spine is decorated in gilt, and the album is housed in a velvet-lined custom box with a metal clasp and the initials E J F on top. The custom box also opens to reveal a fold-out slipcase that holds the album itself, and the only apology is that the top part of the custom box is detached, but you don’t notice that when the box is closed.

We don’t know who painted the watercolors in this album, but the first one resembles watercolors painted by Sarah Mapps Douglass and Ada Howell Hinton. Both were educators and anti-slavery activists from the African American community in Philadelphia in the 1830’s and 40’s, and their watercolors are highly prized. The images painted on letters by Sarah Mapps Douglass may also be the first or earliest surviving examples of signed paintings by an African American woman in this country.

The box measures 6 x 8 1/2 in. wide and the album itself measures 7 1/4 x 5 in. wide, with gilt dentelles on silk moire floral-patterned endpapers, and all the edges are gilt, and selling albums like this was one way to raise money for the abolitionist movement in the mid 1800’s, and coming from England and being bought at a fair here, the album has a wonderful connection - it makes it seem like people in England were joining handswith people in this country to promote freedom and equality. A rare archive with social and historical significance.