September 11, 12, 13—1850

Whitman Archive Title: September 11, 12, 13—1850
Whitman Archive ID: hyb.00016
Repository: Catalog of the Walt Whitman Literary Manuscripts in the Trent Collection of Whitmaniana, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
Repository Title: Mother's family lived
Date: Between 1850 and 1883
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 2 leaves, handwritten
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Content: This manuscript, consisting of two leaves, features an autobiographical account of Whitman's visit to his birthplace in Huntington, Long Island. Whitman mentions this visit in "The Old Whitman and Van Velsor Cemeteries," an 1881 recollection published in Specimen Days. Although Whitman probably wrote the manuscript during or shortly after the visit in September 1850, he returned to it as late as 1883, adding a note at the end of the piece about the death of his stepuncle (see Edward Grier, Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 1:4). At some point, the leaves of the manuscript became separated, and the first leaf wound up at the University of Virginia and the second at Duke University. We have presented them here as one object.