Notes
This letter belongs to a collection of correspondence primarily from Lucy Gray Henry Harrison (1857–1944) to Stanislaus “Stan” Vincent Henkels (1854–1926) concerning a proposed sale of Patrick Henry family heirlooms in 1910. Mrs. Harrison was Patrick Henry's great-granddaughter and the last Henry descendant to own and live at Red Hill. She grew up in Richmond, Virginia, and moved to Duluth, Minnesota, after marrying real estate millionaire Matthew Bland Harrison (1853–1892) in 1886. In 1905, she inherited Red Hill and moved onto the property, where she lived along with her sister, Elizabeth Watkins Henry Lyons (1855–1920), and her assistant, Elizabeth H. Kerper (1890–1964).
Mrs. Harrison inherited many of the family heirlooms that had belonged to Patrick Henry and many of his papers. In 1910, on the advice of Philadelphia neurologist and writer Dr. Weir Mitchell (1829–1914), she contacted Stan V. Henkels about a possible private sale or public auction of some of these pieces. Mr. Henkels was an antique dealer in Philadelphia well-known for his auctions and private sales to collectors. The correspondence from Mrs. Harrison to Mr. Henkels details their business negotiations from May 1910 leading up to the sale of the items in Philadelphia on December 20, 1910. It also includes letters concerning a settling of accounts between them up through February 1911.
The Henry heirlooms Mrs. Harrison sent to auction included Patrick Henry’s sword cane, a walking stick with a metal head. The cane was presented to the Virginia State Library in June 1902 by Elizabeth Henry Lyons. It was returned to Red Hill sometime before Mrs. Harrison contacted Mr. Henkels about the auction, and she shipped it to him on June 16, 1910. At auction, it was sold for $25 to a Mr. Bixby.
Mrs. Harrison also sent a collection of Henry’s letters and other documents. One of the auctioned documents was Henry’s handwritten draft of the Stamp Act Resolves, which Charles Hamilton (1847–1930) bought for $1,400 and is now in the special collections of the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library at Colonial Williamsburg. Two other documents, a draft of a 1795 letter (76.5.7) from Henry to George Washington (1732–1799) and a 1782 land grant (76.5.6) signed by Governor Benjamin Harrison V. (1726–1791), are now in the Red Hill collection after being purchased at Mr. Henkels’ auction by Charles Hamilton (1847–1930) and donated to the PHMF by Mr. Hamilton’s heirs in 1959. A copy of the receipt for the reimbursement of the gunpowder that Lord Dunmore ordered taken from the Williamsburg Magazine in April 1775 was bought at the auction by the Virginia State Library for $100 and is now housed at the Virginia Museum of History & Culture. Other papers included letters between Henry and Richard Henry Lee (1732–1794) and letters to Henry from Henry Lee III (1756–1818) and David Ross (1739–1819).
Henry Lee III, also known as “Light Horse Harry,” was an officer in the Continental Army and a Virginia politician who served as governor from 1791 to 1794. Eighteen letters from Lee—thirteen addressed to Patrick Henry—were sold at Henkels’ auction in December 1910. In three letters written to Henry in 1795, Lee encourages Henry to accept an appointment to the Supreme Court, a position which Henry ultimately declined. Lee’s letter of December 26, 1795, sold for $38 at the auction.
David Ross was one of the wealthiest Virginia planters of the 1780s and the developer of Oxford Iron Works near Lynchburg. During the Revolution, he served as a commercial agent for Virginia troops and later served in the Virginia General Assembly. The “Yazoo matter” refers to the Georgia legislature’s attempt to sell a large portion of its land claims in the west (called “Yazoo lands,” after the Yazoo River) to three land companies in 1789. Patrick Henry and David Ross were two founding members of the Virginia Yazoo Company, which purchased 11.4 million acres of the Yazoo lands. The sale was not completed, however, after the Georgia legislature refused to accept the three companies’ payment in depreciated paper currency.
Mrs. Harrison sent Mr. Henkels a copy of the “Maryland Gazette” on the front page on July 14, 1778, with George Washington’s signature. The paper contained copies of Washington’s letters to Congress, dated June 28 and July 1, 1778, in which Washington describes General Charles Lee’s (1732–1782) insubordination at the Battle of Monmouth. The paper was sold at the December 1910 auction for $45.
The English law books Mrs. Harrison sent to auction included five volumes of “Modern Reports: Being a Collection of several Special Cases Most of them adjudged in the Court of Common Pleas,” published between 1700 and 1720, which were purchased by the Museum of the American Revolution and are currently housed in their collection. Also included was William Peere William’s “Report of Cases Argued and Determined in the High Court of Chancery,” published in 1749. This was purchased from the auction by the publishing firm Dodd & Livingston for $26.
A photograph of the desk Mrs. Harrison sent to be auctioned appears in George Morgan's 1907 biography “The True Patrick Henry.” Mrs. Harrison shipped the desk to Philadelphia in June 1910, and it was sold on order at the December auction for $500. The desk, along with the corner chair and the caster set, is pictured in Mr. Henkels’ auction catalog (76.5.2).
Thomas Sully’s (1783–1872) portrait of Patrick Henry is an oil painting on canvas commissioned in 1815 by Henry’s first biographer, William Wirt (1772–1834). An engraving of the portrait was featured on the frontispiece of Wirt’s 1817 biography, “Sketches of the Life & Character of Patrick Henry.” Sully based the portrait on one of the few images of Henry painted from life: a 1795 miniature created by Sully’s half-brother, Lawrence Sully (1769–1804). Thomas Sully’s portrait of Henry was given by Wirt to Henry’s youngest son, John (1796–1868), who passed the portrait on to his son William Wirt Henry (1831–1900), who loaned it to the Virginia State Library in Richmond from 1873 to 1884 before he passed it on to his daughter, Lucy Harrison. In 1902 Mrs. Harrison loaned the portrait again to the Virginia State Library but reclaimed it in 1910 to sell it at Mr. Henkels’ auction, where it was purchased by Charles Hamilton for $4,000. The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation later purchased the portrait from the Hamilton family and currently has it in its collection. In this letter, Mrs. Harrison indicates that the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts was interested in acquiring the portrait. Founded in 1805, the Academy is dedicated to collecting and exhibiting American art, with several of Thomas Sully’s portraits included in their collection.
The Morgan collection was started by banker and financier J. Pierpont Morgan (1837–1913), who began collecting rare manuscripts, books, and artworks in the 1890s. The Morgan Library and Museum, constructed near his home in New York between 1902 and 1906, houses the collection.
The letter from George Washington to Henry that Mrs. Harrison sent was a contemporary copy of a January 15, 1799, letter in which Washington urged Henry to run for Congress or the Virginia General Assembly.
The Patrick Henry Memorial Foundation purchased this letter from an online seller in May 2004 as part of the collection of correspondence.