Rick Stattler’s Specialist Picks: Five Standout Lots from the June 12, 2025 Americana Auction

We love all of the lots in our auctions equally.  Here are a few from our June 12 Americana sale, which are more equal than the others.

The Iconic…

Thomas Hariot’s Admiranda narratio fida tamen, de commodis et incolarum ritibus Virginiae (Part One of DeBry’s Great Voyages in Latin), which appears as lot 190 with a $25,000-35,000 estimate. This is the first obtainable account of European colonization in North America, with the first detailed map of the Virginia area, and numerous engravings. It was written by a scientist who accompanied Sir Walter Raleigh to the doomed Roanoke Colony in 1585 and returned to London before its mysterious disappearance.

The Unexpected…

Personal letter from Joseph Smith’s maternal grandmother, Lydia Mack, lot 134, $6,000-9,000. A box of rather mundane Bill family papers from the town of Gilsum, New Hampshire, was sent on consignment. We noted that the town had been home to some of the extended family of Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormons. As it turns out, the Bill family were Smith’s first cousins—and the papers included a January 1800 letter from Smith’s grandmother in Tunbridge, VT. She passes on news of Smith’s mother, Lucy Mack Smith, and the imminent birth of Smith’s older brother Hyrum. We know of no other letters from Lydia Mack at auction or elsewhere.

The Disturbing…

Letters and diary of Northerner William Wood in Mississippi on the eve of the Civil War, lot 175, $1,000-1,500. Wood was a recent college graduate who went south to sell book subscriptions in late 1859. Though he did not go south as an active abolitionist, he was a careful and sympathetic observer of the plight of enslaved people, describing an escapee in chains, arbitrary beatings, slave auctions, and an insane plot to capture enslaved people from Key West and sell them in Mississippi.

The Rare…

Principles and By Laws of the Mitchel Guard, Company A, Irish Rifles, lot 151, $2,000-3,000. This militia unit was formed from the Irish immigrant community of New York in 1853, named after the famous Irish nationalist leader John Mitchel. These recent arrivals were not shy about expressing their dual loyalty: “Believing we owe a sacred duty to the land that gave us birth (Ireland) and having full faith in her future, believing that God is true and merciful, we firmly hope in his ultimate recognition of the justice of her cause.” Little is known about this militia unit, and no other examples of this tiny booklet have been located in libraries or at auction.

The Bizarre…

Album of the exploits of competitive flagpole sitter “Hold ‘Em Joe” Powers, lot 185, $800-1200. We are not sure that pole-sitting counts as a sport, but if it’s a sport, it may be the worst one. Joe Powers spent 16 days balanced on a tiny platform atop a Chicago hotel flagpole in 1927. He did not get much sleep, did not smell so good, and lost a couple of teeth when the wind blew him into the flagpole—fully earning his allotted fifteen minutes of fame.