Sale 2471 - Printed & Manuscript African Americana, March 29, 2018

313 c   (PHOTOGRAPHY.) 3 photographs of Henry Green, longtime servant to Secretary of the Navy GideonWelles, with a letter to him. 5 items, various sizes; photographs in strong condition, the letter with a closed tear through the first leaf and lacking most of the second leaf below the signature, passport worn with a complete tear along the center fold. Vp, circa 1867-77 [2,000/3,000] Henderson Trent, better known as Henry Green (circa 1844-1911), was born into slavery in Virginia. During the Civil War, he escaped to freedom and became the servant for a young Union cavalry lieutenant, Thomas Glastonbury Welles (1846-1892). He soon came into the employ of Thomas’s wealthy father Gideon Welles (1802-1878), then Secretary of the Navy, and when Welles left the government in 1869, Green went on with the family to their home in Connecticut. Green spend the rest of his life as head servant and coachman in theWelles family. He was buried in Hartford’s Cedar Hill Cemetery, final resting place of the city’s elite, and was thought to be the first African American thus honored. SeeWoodward,“Henry Green and the Final Underground,” in Connecticut Explored 12:3 (Summer 2014). PHOTOGRAPHY LOTS 313 - 323