Large Cast Iron JOCKO Lawn Jockey/ Hitching Post Very Good Condition

Vintage Cast Iron Lawn Jockey. I have to assume that somewhere along the line it has been repainted.

The paint is in very good condition with but a few small chips that should be able to be touched up. It stands about 38 tall including the base. The statue itself is 24 and is attached to the base.

The platform that Jocko stands on is 12" X 12" - The base at the bottom is 10" x 10". What you see in some of the photos at the base is a piece of carpet that was apparently attached to protect floors.

I removed it to take a photo of the inside. The lantern is wired although there is no plug attached to the wire which is shown inside the base bottom.

I live in Doylestown PA about 40 Miles north of Philadelphia and 80 miles south of NYC. Jocko Graves was a young African American boy whose service during the American Revolutionary War earned him the commemorative statue, the lawn jockey.

Gravess story is a short and tragic one. It begins on Christmas Eve, December of 1776, with General George Washingtons crossing the Delaware River to battle the British Army. A local African American man, Tom Graves, answered the call for local militia men to fight in the generals army.

Gravess son, Jocko Graves, was only twelve years old, but he followed his father into the army, ready to fight the enemy. General Washington, upon hearing about young Jocko, was astonished at his readiness to engage in battle. The general, however, deemed Jocko Graves too young to be involved in battle and ordered him to tend to officers horses and keep a lantern burning, so the soldiers would know how to return to camp after the fighting ended. Meanwhile, General Washington and his army boarded boats and began the crossing of the icy Delaware River.

A blizzard that night delayed some of Washingtons solders from making the crossing with the main body, and two soldiers died of hypothermia before reaching the Christmas Day battle the next morning. Washington was so moved by the boys dedication that he commissioned a statue of The Faithful Groomsman to stand in honor of Graves at the Generals estate in Mt. Over time, the statues original form changed, and its origin story was forgotten. The statue became known as The Lawn Jockey and by the mid-nineteenth century was usually depicted as the racial Sambo character, with very dark skin and big protruding lips.

It was also often used as a hitching post for horses and made out of cast iron, while others were used as ornaments for front lawns. Some accounts claim that the statue was used to signal Underground Railroad station stops. According to these accounts, an American flag in the hand of the statue signaled runaway slaves that it was safe to stop at that home. Also, dressing the statue in a striped shirt meant that a fugitive slave could obtain a horse. Contemporary historians now describe the origins and ironic uses of the lawn jockey statue as a testament to the memory of Jocko Graves.

The National Great Blacks in Wax Museum in Baltimore, Maryland, features one of the earliest surviving versions of the statue. The item "Large Cast Iron JOCKO Lawn Jockey/ Hitching Post Very Good Condition" is in sale since Saturday, October 14, 2017. This item is in the category "Collectibles\Cultures & Ethnicities\Black Americana\Figures & Sculptures". The seller is "rmon3283" and is located in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.

This item can't be shipped, the buyer must pick up the item.

• Provenance: Ownership History Not Available
• Country/Region of Manufacture: United States
• Featured Refinements: Lawn Jockey