New Inventory
Map Showing Routes of the Pacific Coast Steamship Company, June to Sept. 1889
This scarce1/ Map Showing Routes of the Pacific Coast Steamship Company for the 1889 summer tourist season covers San Diego in Southern California and as far north beyond British Possessions to Glacier Bay and Chilcat in Alaska. The map's title block is a vignette showing a large passenger and freight steamship at the pier in Alaska's Thousand Islands with the subtitle "Seen From Sitka". Passengers congregate at the pier and freight is piled ready to be loaded as smoke billows from the two stacks on board, the view northwest out to the Pacific Ocean. Another steamship can be seen in...
Mexican Treasury, with Banco De Avio, 1830 - 1850 Banking and Treasury Reports (5)
This lot of four (4) distinct annual finance and banking titles (1850 in duplicate) published by the Mexican government are reports on the years 1830 to 1850 that constitute original records for analysis by scholars of Latin American finance and internal Mexican public finance with which to reconstruct internal Mexican public finance during Mexico's turbulent political times, including the era leading to the revolt in Tejas (Texas) and secession of Tejas (Texas) to become an independent republic, and by the 1840's the lead up and consequences to Mexico of the Mexican-American War when it lost 55% of its territory to...
Map of Boston for 1888.
This detailed neighborhood and street map of the City of Boston as it neared the last decade of the 19th century was published by Sampson, Murdock, & Co. for the visitor to Boston, or Boston resident who wanted to navigate the city with confidence, there being no other means to learn the streets, ways and neighborhoods of a rapidly evolving Boston. This map and the directory accompanying it belong to a book format with a long publishing history in Boston that began in 1789 with John Norman.1/ Mary Sampson, the president of Sampson Publishing Company began publishing a Boston Directory with...
Plan of Boston Proper Showing Changes in Street And Wharf Lines 1795 To 1895
This large, colorful, separately issued, Plan of Boston Proper 1795 to 1895, describing Boston's downtown area bounded by Boston Harbor, the Charles River, Fort Point Channel and to the west Massachusetts Avenue (including Charles Gate West) is rich with over two hundred years of survey work describing Boston's waterfront and urban development.1/ The Plan of Boston Proper 1795 to 1895 includes a color coded key that is essential to reading the map. Using different colors the map represent the Boston shoreline and streets from as early as 1630 based on late 17th c. surveys as compiled in 1852 by Ellis...
Ornamental Map of the United States and Mexico.
This scarce edition of Ensigns & Thayer's decorative broadside Ornamental Map of the United States and Mexico, undated, with its large inset map titled Map of the United States and Mexico flanked by two columns of the existing American states 1/, celebrates the 1848 United States victory in the two year Mexican-American War, settled by treaty granting America 55% of Mexico's prewar territory, including California and land that would become New Mexico, Colorado and an expanded Texas.2/ This colorful broadsheet presents America's ultimate coast to coast Western expansion following on the heels of American annexation of Texas in 1845 and...
A Map of the Towns of Dorchester and Milton, 1831.
This rare and early published survey of the Towns of Dorchester and Milton, Massachusetts was prepared and published to satisfy the 1830 order of the Massachusetts Legislature that each town in the Commonwealth have prepared a survey of its boundaries, roads and interior features. The 1831 Edmund J. Baker survey of these two towns straddling the Neponset River, which serves as the boundary line between them, conveys considerable geographic and historic information about these early Massachusetts towns as of 1830 to 1831. Both 18th and early 19th c. Dorchester and Milton contributed locally manufactured goods to industries elsewhere in Massachusetts...
A Mapp of the Sommer Islands Once Called the Bermudas, c. 1627-1631
This 17th century map of the Sommer Islands, engraved in Amsterdam and importantly published in England "to be sold by George Humble in Pops-head Alley" is the early, rare edition that lists the names of the island's original English settlers and shows their houses, a castle, a church and other buildings throughout the settled lots. A miniature image of the Bermuda islands appears below the map title block where the title and accompanying text is written in both English and Latin. Two engraved shields decorate the lower corners, one showing the embattled ship bound for Virginia, and the other with...
New York Cooper's Society Membership Certificate No. 76, July Seventh, 1794. Jeremiah Dobbs, member. engraved by William Rollinson
The engraver of Jeremiah Dobbs' 1794 New York Cooper's Society Membership Certificate engraves his name "Rollinson Delt. et Sct." This signature compares with William Rollinson's signature on documented American works in 1791, 1792 and 1796. Examples of these works are published in facsimile by his 1931 biographers and exist in institutional collections.1 The Jeremiah Dobbs New York Cooper's Society Membership Certificate of July 7, 1794 is a newly discovered, early American pictorial engraving by William Rollinson, highly regarded in his lifetime as an American silversmith, artist and copper plate engraver.2 This engraving is a complex and highly symbolic work of...
Map of the Town of Dartmouth Bristol County Mass. 1856
This detailed and decorative wall map of Dartmouth, Massachusetts presents a prosperous and well settled coastal Massachusetts town in 1856. The Map of the Town of Dartmouth shows its 27 numbered School Districts and is illustrated with six pictorial vignettes, including the J. Cummings Stone Mill, the 1st Congregational Church, B.T. Cummings' Store and Wm. Cummings' House, the Matthews, Meshow & Co.'s Ship Yard, the Apponagansett Bridge and the School House in District No. 10. There are four inset maps, the largest one being of densely settled South Dartmouth that identifies the Toll House at the Aponagansett Bridge and the...
Plan of The Lands & Water of the Parker Mills Co. in Wareham Mass., c. 1834
This undated manuscript Plan of the Lands & Water of the Parker Mills Co. in Wareham, Mass. c. 1834? is a rare, new discovery that offers a detailed view of Wareham in its early industrial period. The scope of the Plan of the Lands and Water of the Parker Mills Co. (the "Plan") is defined by the geographic scope of the property of one of Wareham's major iron and nail manufacturers, the Parker Mills Co., whose business history begins in the 1830's, and predate its 1845 legal incorporation by Act of the Massachusetts Legislature. The predecessor to the Parker Mills...
GEORGIA. (1808), Daniel Sturges, Surveyor General
The Georgia Plan (1808) and the Sturges/Bohlen Archive (1795-1808) are a remarkable set of newly discovered historic documents centering on Georgia and Philadelphia that personalize Georgia's complex land accession and land survey history, and highlight major land fraud schemes of 1795 to 1808. Sturges' Georgia Plan (1808) and the Sturges/Bohlen Archive are first person reminders of America's fraught creation myth, and highlight the competing forces of private investment in land, mercantile speculation, government channeling of such forces and the role of the courts, all with provocative relevance for the unfolding American story. [19]
For clarity, this complex lot is presented...
Holden, c.1838 (engraved at Lahainaluna, Hawaii)
Edward Bailey, teacher, artist, craftsman, surveyor, naturalist, businessman, and man of many other skills drew this image of the town common of Holden, Massachusetts. It is a summer landscape and the tall trees surrounding the town common are in full leaf. Whether young Edward Bailey drew this detailed portrait of his cherished home before leaving Holden for Boston in December, 1836 to embark with Caroline Hubbard, his new wife, also a teacher, to teach Hawaiian pupils at the secular mission schools of the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions ("ABCFM") in the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) or from memory during...
Gratia Denny Friendship Album 1826-1832 (manuscript)
This Album is a six year slice of life along the Connecticut River only 50 years after the American Revolution that reflects contact with America's foremost institutions, America's early 19th c. intellectual activists, educators, abolitionists, free thinkers, and artists - including the deaf painter Augustus Fuller, Catherine E. Beecher, Thomas Gallaudet, religious thinkers and relationships in the personal life of Gratia Denny, an extraordinary individual. Gratia Denny, at the age of 28, set out from Leicester, Massachusetts in 1826 and traveled by stage coach and river boat (there were no trains) with her youngest brother, Edwards W. Denny (also known...
"Africa", Phebe Varney, 1830, [Society of Friends], manuscript
This hand drawn map is signed "Phebe Varney, 1830. Dover Duchess County" on the front. The title of the map is "Africa". The map is hand drawn on thick paper with colored inks and possibly a fine brush. The thickness and opacity of the paper would not have permitted easy tracing and therefore it is most likely the author of the map drew it freehand, perhaps using a grid system (or longitude and latitude lines) to scale up or down a published map or set of maps of Africa. The map appears to be unique.
Phebe Varney and her family...
Abraham Lincoln, Portrait Photograph, 1860 and 1881
Alexander Hesler (1823 – 1895), the American photographer based in Chicago, Illinois took this photograph of Abraham Lincoln when he was a candidate for President of the United States. Hesler had Lincoln sit for this portrait in Hesler's Chicago studio in 1860.
The contents of Hesler's studio, including the glass negative for this print were purchased in 1867 by George B. Ayres (1829-1905). On the back of this photograph, on the secondary support, is the manuscript inscription " Copyright Geo. B. Ayres Phila." The platinum print was made by George B. Ayres and signed on the back.
The platinum print process...