“Mercy! mercy on me. What fellows those Baltimoreans are. After the example of the Alexandrians I thought I had nothing to do but enter the Town and carry off the Booty. And here is nothing but Defeat and Disgrace!!”

A masterpiece of design and composition.

This double-sided ledger page from the Hudson River Rail Road Company includes signatures by stockholders for receipt of payments for the 11^th and 12^th dividends, paid in October 1867 and April 1868, respectively. The company paid its shareholders 4 percent dividends on capital stock twice each year—in April and October. This page is signed twice by Cornelius Vanderbilt, once for the October 1867 dividends on his own 22,740 shares and again for those of his son William H. Vanderbilt’s 2,133 shares. Cornelius Vanderbilt’s shares generated $90,960, while those of his son yielded $8,532.

These two pages include the names of 42 individuals and companies that were stockholders in the Hudson River Railroad. Most entries are for from one to a few hundred shares of stock, but Work, Davis & Barton owned 3,000 shares of stock. One of Vanderbilt’s rivals for control of the Erie Railroad, James Fisk Jr. (1835-1872), later asserted that Work, Davis, and Barton held the shares on behalf of Vanderbilt.

This traveler’s guide included detailed listings of railroad, stage, and steamboat routes to locations throughout the United States with intermediate mileage and cumulative mileage on each route. It also includes a list of canals in the United States. It was issued annually from 1846 to 1850.

It is accompanied by a large folding map (20½ x 26 in.), with hand-colored outlines of each state and territory. It is believed to be the first published map to include the frontier settlement of Dallas, Texas, along the Trinity River.

This bold broadside, published in Boston, consists of an overview map of the entire eastern United States, with free states hand-colored red; maps of Baltimore; the District of Columbia; Norfolk Harbor and Hampton Roads with Fort Monroe. The largest maps, extending half the width of the broadside each are of Charleston Harbor with details of its fortifications and of the Pensacola Navy Yard and Fort Pickens. The broadside also includes images of Andrew Jackson with the quotation, “The union must & shall be preserved”; Abraham Lincoln; Winfield Scott, with the quotation “Please God, I will fight many years for this Union, and that too, under the protective folds of the star spangled banner”; and Major Robert Anderson, “The Hero of Sumter” and Routes and Distances by both steamboat and railroad from Boston and Washington to various parts of the nation.

A very large letterpress broadside for three intramural Yale boat races on Lake Saltonstall in East Haven, Connecticut. Participants rowed in racing shells, double sculls, and wherries, contesting for cash prizes. Excursion trains from downtown New Haven cost 50 cents, and a band enlivened the afternoon.

Golda Meyerson (she would change her name to Meir in 1956), promotes the idea of Mapam (the Marxist United Workers’ Party) joining Sharett’s Mapai (Workers’ Party) government. Hazan, the recipient, was one of Mapam’s co-founders.

“The American Sloop-of-war SARATOGA, Capt. Walker, arrived at this port on the 29^th ult., in 25 days from Japan, which is the shortest passage ever made. The S. brings Capt. H.A. Adams, U.S.N., as bearer of despatches to the Government at Washington. The point of interest in this intelligence is the fact that Com. Perry concluded a TREATY OF AMITY AND FRIENDSHIP with the EMPIRE OF JAPAN...”

The Friend was the mouthpiece of Congregational missionaries and reported everything from important local Hawaiian issues to international news reprinted from eastern sources. The nine months covered here feature a great deal of the news of the day, ranging from war between England and Russia to lots of whaling and maritime news including shipping arrivals and departures, the discovery of new sperm whaling grounds, naval intelligence, all peppered with a liberal dose of good old fashioned conservative proselytizing.

This particular volume was sent from Sag Harbor, New York to Thomas Spencer, a Rhode Island sea captain who went native, opening a successful ship’s chandlery and marrying a local girl.

A future hero of the French and Indian War leases Turtle Bay for fifty years of use by the British Navy. From the beginning of European settlement, it offered sailing vessels refuge from the East River’s treacherous currents and winter storms. Today, it helps weather different kinds of storms: it was filled in and is the site of the present United Nations complex.

This extensive collection of suffrage cards and pins represents the efforts of female and male suffragists and anti-suffragists across several states between 1912 and 1920.

This rare descriptive list of men enlisted for Continental service from Massachusetts includes an African American who served in the militia. The first page lists eight men belonging to three companies in Colonel John Daggett’s regiment of Massachusetts militia. The list gives each man’s age; height; color of complexion, hair, and eyes; and town. All are from Norton in Bristol County, approximately thirty miles south of Boston. Among the militiamen who were forwarded for Continental service was 26-year-old London Morey, “a Negro,” but according to his military records, he was “rejected” at Fishkill, New York.

The verso contains a tabular list of twenty men recruited from Colonel John Daggett’s militia regiment for nine months’ service in the Continental Army. They were from Attleboro, Easton, and Mansfield. The table lists each man’s company, name, age, height, complexion, eye color, town, and county or country. The last four listed are from France. Several served in the 12^th Massachusetts Regiment under the command of Col. Gamaliel Bradford.

This engraving by David Edwin pictures Jefferson standing beside a table, with his hand on a desktop globe. Edwin copied the head from the Rembrandt Peale portrait of 1800. Edwin placed Jefferson in a black suit in a formal setting, comparable to the 1796 portrait of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart (known as the “Lansdowne” portrait because it was commissioned as a gift for William Petty, first Marquis of Lansdowne).

From a limited edition of Eisenhower’s Crusade in Europe, (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1948), limited to 1,426 copies. The war had ended only three years earlier, and Eisenhower must have been looking towards politics - he was elected to the Presidency in 1952.

We can have this archivally framed for an additional fee. 

“My friends are preparing for a convention at Columbus on the 22^d whichwill be the largest assemblage of citizens & otherwise the most interesting ever held in the Western Country…”

Harrison asks U.S. Senator Daniel Webster for assistance on the sale of land in Vincennes, Indiana, and mentions an upcoming Whig convention in Columbus, Ohio. After his election, Harrison appointed Webster as his Secretary of State.

“He needs to do a lot of soul searching for he is the kind of guy we fear. His opportunity to spread his views and his cleverness will continue to be a stumbling block before we reach peace here at home.”

Woman’s Suffrage failed in all three states that held suffrage referenda on November 2, 1915: New York, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts.