The Joseph Dow trunk archive · Document gallery 58

Freedmen’s songs, Raleigh teaching papers and diary fragments

23 photographs · 8 document groups

Photographed by Whit from the recovered Joseph Dow collection. Descriptions draw on visible names, dates and subjects; uncertain readings remain provisional. Reading copies are turned upright, and each image links to the unchanged full-resolution original.

JDT-D433 · Songs collected among freedpeople — December 1865

The manuscript heading identifies Freedmen’s Songs collected in December 1865. Pages include “Wrestling Jacob,” “The Heavenly Land” and a song about a little ship sailing to the promised land, with Jesus as captain and the Holy Ghost as pilot. Performance notes describe refrains and the substitution of verses; one page includes sol-fa syllables.

5 photographs

JDT-D434 · Songs: Love, Wrestling Jacob and Going Home

The following leaves preserve additional stanzas and variants, including “Love,” “Wrestling Jacob” and “Going Home.” The closing page names the River Jordan, Hebrew children and peace and glory. These are descriptions of the handwritten historical song collection; spellings and wording remain available in the photographs.

4 photographs

JDT-D435 · The Southern Opinion’s Prize Poems

The broadside prints poems commemorating Confederate soldiers, including “The Confederate Dead” and “Twilight at Hollywood.” Its columns present postwar memorial verse and prize notices; the headings preserve the publisher’s stated subject.

1 photograph

JDT-D436 · Geography fragment: South America

The printed page discusses Chile, Patagonia, La Plata and Brazil, with sections on earthquakes, horses, crops, rubber and the Amazon. It preserves the period textbook’s geographical claims and descriptions.

1 photograph

JDT-D437 · Manuscript preface and revised draft

The preface compares an introduction to the entry of a house and explains the writer’s wish to sustain interest in the welfare of formerly enslaved people. A second sheet preserves crossed-out wording and revisions.

2 photographs

JDT-D438 · Rambles about Raleigh: teaching among freedpeople

The manuscript begins with a small band of teachers leaving New England to work among freedpeople. Later passages describe a mother and child separated under slavery and reunited, and a visit to Charlotte’s new baby. The photographs preserve the rolled manuscript, its title slip and successive written passages.

4 photographs

JDT-D439 · Teaching diary on army quartermaster stationery

The sheet uses Headquarters Department of North Carolina, Army of the Ohio, Office Chief Quartermaster stationery dated 1865 in print. The handwritten April diary entries discuss school, sewing lessons, pupils arriving late, letters and a proposed night school. Detail views show the same dated page.

3 photographs

JDT-D440 · Diary fragments: cold weather, illness and school

The December entries mention earache, inadequate clothing, frozen water and difficulty attending night school. The layered photographs retain the manuscript’s folded arrangement and show portions partly obscured by adjoining leaves.

3 photographs

Collection photographs supplied by Whit. Descriptions are finding aids, not full transcriptions. Names, dates and associations remain provisional where the handwriting is uncertain.