Seven Portraits of James V. Mansfield and Members of his Family, ca. 1840s-1890s.
$325
Images of the Mansfield family bring to life and help humanize the collection’s extensive body of handwritten materials. These images include (1) a quarter plate ambrotype of James Mansfield looking heavenward; (2 and 3) cut paper silhouettes of James Mansfield and his wife Mary Hopkinson in 4” x 5” oval frames; (4) an albumen photograph of their son John Worthington Mansfield in an oval brass frame; (5) a watercolor portrait of James Mansfield’s granddaughter; (6) an albumen photograph of James late in life, in a 2 ½” x 2” blue enamel oval frame; and (7) a quarter plate tintype of an unidentified man.
About this Collection: The James V. Mansfield Papers
The William L. Clements Library had the unprecedented opportunity to acquire a large portion of the papers of James V. Mansfield (1817-1899), his wife Mary Hopkinson Mansfield (b. ca. 1827), and their children John Worthington Mansfield (1849-1933) and Mary Gertrude Mansfield (1854-1922). James Mansfield was born in 1817 in Massachusetts and worked as an itinerant penmanship teacher and a dry goods merchant in Boston before establishing himself as a spiritualist medium in 1857. James Mansfield’s services included delivering séances in person or acting as a writing medium. You were able to send to Mansfield a letter to a deceased family member or friend, and he would channel the departed, who would then respond to the unopened letter. Mansfield would return the reply and the original letter for a fee. For this service he gained the moniker “spirit postmaster,” and is now recognized as one of the founders of the American spiritualist movement, alongside Charles Foster and Henry Slade.