Records & Results: Printed & Manuscript Americana — November 21, 2024

Swann’s Thursday, November 21 auction of Printed & Manuscript Americana brought $608,036, landing squarely in the pre-sale estimates, with 234 of the 320 lots offered finding buyers. Of the auction, Specialist Rick Stattler noted, “This auction found collectors going back to basics, with particularly strong results for the early colonial period, the Constitution and early republic, and especially the Civil War—perhaps part of an increasing interest in the foundations of the American experiment.”

New England’s First Fruits

The sale was led by a rare 1643 first edition of New Englands First Fruits, at $60,000, a
first edition, first state, of the first of Eliot’s Indian Tracts, which examined the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s first years and Harvard College’s establishment.

Mormon History

Additional top lots included the 1815 Catalogue of the Library of the United States which described Thomas Jefferson’s personal library—the initial core of the Library of Congress ($30,000); and three important Mormon lots relating to founder Joseph Smith: a diary of an 1833 mission to western New York with Joseph Smith ($50,000), a family register of Brigham Young and his siblings written by Rhoada Richards, one of Smith’s plural wives ($20,000), and a pair of deeds signed by Smith’s grandfather and uncle ($27,500). 

Rare Books

Book highlights included a 1784 to 1793 volume of Connecticut acts and laws featuring an early printing of the Constitution ($15,000), and Agustín de Mora’s rare illustrated 1701 Mexican book El sol eclypsado antes de llegar al zenid ($8,125), making its first appearance at auction since Swann sold another copy in 1946.

Ephemera, Archives & Manuscript Diaries

Ephemera included the cover lot, a tintype sheet of 1860 presidential candidate campaign photographs ($11,875), and a set of three circa-1790 engravings of the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico, which showcase rarely seen early views of one of the most visited Catholic pilgrimage sites ($7,000). Large archives included papers of Consul James Maury and his family, Maury’s father had been Thomas Jefferson’s teacher ($5,750), family papers of noted physician Cornelius R. Agnew ($13,750), and records of the Sterling Iron & Railway Company in Orange County, New York ($4,250). No Swann Americana auction is complete without a great diary. Notable manuscript diaries included Catherine Colver Williams, a mother searching the South for her lost soldier son in the Civil War ($5,750); W. Everett Clark, a Civil War hospital worker describing Lincoln, contraband, and more ($7,000); and the journal of the whaling ship Hunter out of New Bedford ($12,500). 

Auction Records

The sale established several new auction records. A panorama view of the Gold Rush boomtown of Dawson City, Yukon Territory, brought $1,875, a record for photographer Floyd W. Sheelor; the Civil War pamphlet The United States Conscription Law of 1863, which established the military draft, brought a record $4,250; Kate Cumming’s Journal of Hospital Life in the Confederate Army, 1866, brought $2,210; and Daniel P. Smith’s Three Years in the Confederate Service, 1885, brought $2,375.