FEBRUARY 22, 1797 - RARE ENGRAVED INVITATION to BALL COMMEMORATING the 65th BIRTHDAY of PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON

Item Details

NEW YORK CITY, 1797

This rare invitation was issued for a New York City ball commemorating the  65th birthday of President George Washington.  The February 22, 1797, date was ten days before the inauguration of his successor, John Adams.  

The managers included James Farquhar, James Scott, Aquila Giles, and William M. Seton (the husband of Saint Elizabeth Seton, the first American-born Catholic to be beatified).

3 1/8" x 4 3/4" - engraved on heavy card stock and in very good condition. The reverse was used to record some business transactions. 

On the same date as this celebration, another bit of George Washington-related history was in progress. Hercules Posey, George Washington's enslaved cook, escaped from Mount Vernon and fled to New York City. When Washington returned to Mount Vernon during the first week of March 1797, he promptly wrote that he wanted Hercules found and returned to Mount Vernon.  Both Washington and Mrs. Washington lamented the loss of their cook long after he departed. Washington died in December of 1799, never having found Hercules Posey.  Posey remained a fugitive slave until January 1, 1801, when he was manumitted, along with 122 others that Washington had personally enslaved, under the terms of Washington's will. Hercules lived on William Street at the edge of New York’s current financial district and on Orange Street, which is now Baxter Street in the city’s Chinatown. Longworth’s City Directories for 1807, 1808, 1810, and 1812, indicate he worked alternatively as a laborer and as a cook, living in a neighborhood that formed a vibrant inter-racial community. He died in 1812 and was buried in the Second African Burying Ground on Chrystie Street