My friend Rebecca had seen something on the wall at the history library that she was eager to show me. We were attending a Juneteenth emancipation conference sponsored last weekend by the Library Company of Philadelphia, and I had dropped by specifically for the session on collecting African American memorabilia.
I had not been to the library since coming more than a year ago to see a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation that had been owned by Robert F. Kennedy. It was on a tour of several cities before being auctioned in New York (for $3.7 million).
I dutifully trailed Rebecca to a dimly lit room past historical documents in glass cases and mounted on the walls. She stopped in front of a collage of over-sized vintage lottery broadsides that had been plastered to a wall like wallpaper. The largest of them blared “Relief for Hard Times. $6,150 Lottery.” This lottery, though, wasn’t just offering money as prizes. It was also selling human beings for $10 a ticket: a black man, woman and five “likely” children.
I was used to seeing replicas of broadsides and handbills for slave auctions, but a lottery for enslaved people was a new act of insanity for me. I don’t know why I found it surprising since slave owners tried to wrench all the money, life and dignity they could get out of people they considered property.
The replica broadside was dated Feb. 16, 1858, with the lottery being conducted in the city of Columbus in my home state of Georgia. It also advertised along with the slaves – who were described as Negroes – a Rosewood piano. All could be seen at the auction room of the Harrison & Pitts Co. on Broad Street.
Another handbill posted next to it advertised the Kentucky Lottery, a similar copy of which had come up at an auction about a month ago. The auctioneer there had joked that it was likely the only one on the East Coast – you can probably find them in Kentucky, he had said – adding that he could not vouch for its authenticity. (I learned later that Kentucky lottery tickets were sold in Philadelphia during the 1800s.)
That piece of ephemera sold for about $15 at the auction because no one seemed to want it or know what to do with it. I figured that it was a reproduction.
At the library, a small poster affixed on the wall near the broadsides gave some history of state lotteries in this country. Lotteries had been used since Colonial times to raise money for school buildings, wars and other projects, according to the library. By the 19th century, they were also being run by private people and companies. Soon, there were so many of them that they spawned lottery brokers who oversaw all parts of the operation, according to the library.
Some states started to prohibit them in the 1830s, but they apparently remained pretty popular for much the same reasons they are today: we all want something for nothing and we figure one day we’ll get lucky. Some people would even put up a week’s salary for a package of tickets promising cash and prizes, according to the library.
The Kentucky broadside offered a top payout of $30,000; Louisiana, $60,000 and Jasper County, GA, $7,500. That lottery noted that it had been authorized by the state of Georgia.
Just about anyone who could buy a lottery ticket could play the lottery, in some cases. The Newport (RI) Historical Society reported on its website that in 1791, Newport Gardner – who has been credited with being the country’s first black music teacher – and three friends won $2,000 in a lottery. According to the article, servants, apprentices and enslaved people could buy lottery tickets there and elsewhere. The society said that Gardner used his proceeds along with money he had saved teaching music to win freedom for himself and his family.
Down in South Carolina, Denmark Vesey, who would go on to plan a major slave rebellion in the 1820s, won $1,500 in a lottery in Charleston in 1799. He used part of the money to buy his freedom but was thwarted from applying the rest to freeing his wife and children.
During colonial times, two prominent figures of history ran lotteries: Ben Franklin and George Washington. Franklin conducted a lottery to raise money to buy artillery to protect Philadelphia during the Revolutionary War, while Washington helped run one for money to build a road in the Allegheny Mountains in Virginia. Washington also helped conduct the sale of slaves in a lottery for a fellow planter named Bernard Moore in December 1769. For 10 pounds, people could try to win parts of Moore’s land or one of 39 lots of his 55 slaves – some sold as families, others stripped from their families and sold singly.
The Library Company’s display, according to the poster, showed how lottery operators in the 19th century used hyperbole and more to entice people to buy tickets. Here’s a Louisiana State Lottery handbill with a little girl and boy as advertisement. The private Louisiana State Lottery, according to several accounts, was said to be one of the largest and among the most corrupt. It had a monopoly on the lottery business in that state.
Lotteries became notorious for scandals and scams (and some private companies were criticized), and by the end of the 19th century, many states had outlawed them. Congress disallowed the post office from carrying lottery tickets, and by 1900, all lotteries had been curtailed in the states.
According to the broadside, the Kentucky lottery was set for Monday, June 15, 1863, conducted by a company called Murray, Eddy & Co., which from my research seemed to conduct many that crossed state lines. A well-known man from Philadelphia won $50,000, according to an account in the book Country Gentleman and taken from the Covington (Ky) Leader newspaper in 1867. The man had bought the ticket from one of Murray’s “correspondents” in Philadelphia. “Such an instantaneous jump to wealth is calculated to bring back to memory old-world story of fairy glits; yes almost every week we hear of similar results of luck speculations in Kentucky drawings,” the story said.
