Circa 1849 – A mailing envelope sent by the University of Virginia to John Hartwell Cocke, progressive slave-owner and long-time member of its Board of Visitors who assisted Thomas Jefferson in the early development of the school
University of Virginia [Charlottesville, Virginia]: Circa 1849. The cover was sent to John Harwell Cocke at his famous Bremo Plantation in Fluvanna County from the University of Virginia and is noteworthy for the red strike of the school’s oval postmark with manuscript date and “10” rate mark. It is the most attractive University of Viginia covers we have seen.
Cocke served for thirty-five years on the University of Virginia’s Board of Visitorys. His was first appointed in 1816 when the school was brand new and known as Central College. Throughout his tenure, he was deeply involved in the university’s early development, supervised the construction of its campus with Thomas Jefferson, and pushed for an emphasis on Christianity and agricultural education in the curriculum.
John Hartwell Cocke was also one of the most intriguing plantation owners in the South. A matriculant at the College of William and Mary and graduate of the University of Virginia, he improved his inherited family plantation, Bremo, in Fluvanna County, Virginia, with architectural and scientific innovations. He was also a reformer who advocated both alcohol and tobacco temperance. More importantly, he was an enthusiastic advocate for the African colonization of manumitted slaves. Although Cocke owned more than a hundred slaves, he believed slavery to be against God’s will and was an enthusiastic promoter of the American Colonization Society, serving as its Vice-President from 1819 until his death in 1866. He employed northern teachers to conduct formal schooling at Bremo for his slaves until 1831 when the practice was banned in Virginia, after which his wife took up the task.
Cocke’s boldest action began in the 1840s, when he purchased an Alabama cotton plantation near Greensboro and sent a contingent of slaves there to learn the skills he believed to be necessary for their future success in Liberia. During one of his visits from Virginia to his “Hopewell Plantation” in Alabama, he informed its slaves that he intended to manumit those who worked hard, behaved honestly and obediently, renounced alcohol, and kept the plan, which included providing them with an education, a secret. Of the 82 slaves at Hopewell Plantation, Cocke eventually emancipated 14, whom he transported to Liberia.
. Item #010667(For more information, see “John Hartwell Cocke (1780–1866)” at the online Encyclopedia Virginia, “A Guide to the Cocke Family Papers, 1725-1939” at the University of Virginia, and “Hopewell Plantation, Greene, Alabama” at Wikitree.).
Price: $250.00