Samuel Austin Worcester correspondence and provenance

Collection — huntington box: 8 - folder 1

Identifier: 9051

Scope and content

Two letters from Samuel Worcester, one a typed transcript. Also, letter from Alice Mary Robertson dated January 19, 1877, in which she writes her mother from the Department of the Interior and encloses the letters from Worcester who was her grandfather. Provenance letter from Grant Foreman to Frederic W. Hodge dated October 28, 1930, upon presentation of the letters for the Hodge Collection. One of the Worcester letters is dated April 12, 1826 from Mayhew, Choctaw Nation, addressed to Colonel Thomas L. McKenny [sic] at the War Department. The letter contains a chart on the Cherokee alphabet and a guide to pronunciation. The second letter from Worcester, dated May 11, 1832, is from the Penitentiary at Milledgeville, Georgia. The letter mentions his fellow prisoner Elizur Butler and their situation.

Dates

1826-1832.

Creator

Worcester, S. A. (Samuel Austin), 1798-1859. (Person)
Robertson, Alice, 1854-1931. (Person)
McKenney, Thomas L. (Thomas Loraine), 1785-1859. (Person)
Foreman, Grant, 1869-1953. (Person)
Hodge, Frederick Webb, 1864-1956. (Person)
Huntington Free Library (Former owner, Organization)

Biographical / Historical

Worcester was a missionary who lived with the Cherokee Indians in Georgia. He worked on translating religious texts into the Cherokee language. He and fellow missionary Elizur Butler were sent to jail in 1831 for violating an 1830 law that forbade any white person, except for those specifically licensed by the governor, to live among the Cherokees. Despite winning an appeal in the Supreme Court case, Worcester v.Georgia, both served two years of hard labor. The intention of their appeal was not to grant their release, but to challenge the State of Georgia's jurisdiction over the Cherokee Nation as unconstitutional. President Andrew Jackson refused to enforce the Court's decision, but both were eventually granted clemency by the governor of Georgia.

Biographical / Historical

Alice Robertson was a Congresswoman from Oklahoma, born a member of the Creek Nation. She also served as a clerk in the Indian Office in Washington D.C. and taught at several Indian schools.