The Americana department specializes in unique manuscripts and scarce printed historical material on paper from the fifteenth century to the present. Inclusive of North, Central and South America as well as the Caribbean, sales consist of books and manuscripts, as well as broadsides, pamphlets, ephemera, historical prints and photographs. Areas of focus include the American Revolution, the Civil War, early American imprints, the West, Mormonism, diaries, American Judaica and colonial Latin America.
A specialized annual auction of African Americana augments these offerings. Our team of specialists oversee a wide range of material in this special category, including abolitionist manuscripts, Civil Rights material, entertainment ephemera and advertisements spanning decades, archives, and works from prominent African American artists and literary figures.
The department holds the record sale price for a first edition of The Book of Mormon at $185,000 in 2024, breaking our own record from 2007. Other highlights include a previously unknown 1693 edition of the Bay Psalm Book that reached $221,000; an extensive archive of personal and family papers of Lincoln’s Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, realized $281,000, and a 1778 collection of original ink and watercolor drawings depicting the Battles of Lexington and Concord sold for $100,000. The most notable sale among our African Americana offerings was a previously unrecorded photograph of Harriet Tubman from a carte-de-visite album compiled in the 1860s, which reached $161,000 in March 2017. It has since become one of the most widely recognized images of the abolitionist hero. Additional highlights include the original artwork for A Night-Club Map of Harlem, by E. Simms Campbell for $100,000; an inscribed edition of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun for $30,000; the diary, photographs, and correspondence of modern dance legend Katherine Dunham for $52,500; a 1958 edition of The Negro Motorist Green Book at $62,500; and an inscribed carte-de-visite portrait of early photographer James Presley Ball for $125,000.
Single-owner sales and special collections have included The Holzer Collection of Lincolniana, Revolutionary Americana from the Allyn Kellogg Ford Collection and the Latin Americana Library of Dr. W. Michael Mathes.
