Last illness and death of Mary Emlen Newbold as Recorded in Writing by her Brother James Emlen. with: The Death Bed Testimony of William Williams, Society of Friends Minister.
c 1820s. Item #557 12mo. 200 x 70 mm. [7 1/2 x 6 3/4 inches]. [11] pp. Manuscript with hand-sewn binding and small (25 mm.) straight pin near bottom corner. Edges worn with chipping and tears. Cover partially torn horizontally, but still attached. Damp staining to right edge of first three leaves, fragile condition, with expert paper repairs to folds and tears. A set of Quaker deathbed testimonies, one attributed to Mary (Emlen) Newbold and the other to William Williams, a Society of Friends minister. The two accounts appear to have been written at different times and in different handwriting and later bound together. Both testimonies recount the deathbed experience of two Quakers, one expressing doubt and fear of damnation and the other the certainty of God’s love and everlasting life in Heaven. On the day before her death Mary’s resolve takes a dark turn when she wakes her brother James and tells him: “Oh! Brother I am dead and in hell, I have deceived you all and you all have deceive me… I must be shut up forever in utter darkness with the spirits of wicked men whom I always hated.” James writes that she ultimately did find comfort and “breathed her last with uplifted eyes and hands she exclaimed draw me, draw me, draw me, as if endeavoring to say draw me with the cords of thy love.” On the verso of the first page, it states: “Account of the last illness and death of Mary Newbold written by her brother James in a letter to his Sister Ann.” And then in a different ink, it states: “M.N. (Mary Newbold) was the wife of George Newbold of New York and sister of James Emlen.” On the cover the name “Phebe Haines” is written on the top edge and that of “Jane Peirce, Philadelphia” in the middle, dated August 8, 1823. Mary Emlen (1787 – 1820) married George Newbold in 1807. And the two raised James Emlen in New York City after he was orphaned at the age of 6. Their family history and various connections are well documented in John Woolf Jordan’s Colonial And Revolutionary Families of Pennsylvania. A manuscript note which appears before the testimonial of William Williams reads in part. “Copy of a testimony of William Williams who departed this life about the 1st of 9 1824, delivered about a week before his death.” The text matches the final entry of Williams’ journal published in 1828 by his followers in the Quaker community. William Williams, Journal of the life, travels and gospel labors of William Williams. dec., a minister of the Society of Friends, late of White-Water, Indiana. Cincinnati, 1828, pp 270 – 272. Jordan, John Woolf, Colonial and Revolutionary Families of Pennsylvania. Baltimore, 1978. pp. 196. William S. Powell, Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, University of North Carolina Press, 1999 – online.
Price: $600.00