AMERICANA TO 1820

Gentle Prayers for the“Infant Pilgrim”

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•  Early printing of this collection of Christian-themed verses, taken (without attribution) from Ann and Jane Taylor's Hymns for Infant Minds. The Taylor sisters were, both together and separately, exceptionally popular children's authors; this example of their work featuresa preliminary alphabet and eight woodcut illustrations.

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 44408.   Plain blue-green paper wrappers, much worn and creased, sewing loosening. Lower corners bumped; pages age-toned and lightly spotted. Much worn but not written or scribbled on; this copy easily imaginable as a critical element of some respectful child's nightly bedtime ritual.  (30253)

Early American Edition: German Reformed Hymnal

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•  Gerhardt Tersteegen (1697–1769) was a pillar of German pietism, a popular and innovative poet noted for his use of free verse, and (along with Joachim Neander) one of the two most significant German hymnographers of the 18th century. First published in 1729, his “Spiritual Flower Garden for Ardent Souls” contains “end-rhymes,” “meditations,” and hymns. The first American edition appeared in 1747; this is the fourth.

•  Evans 23823; ESTC W21016; Arndt & Eck 805.   Contemporary mottled sheep, covers framed in blind, with remnants of original clasp, spine with later gilt-stamped leather title and publication labels; leather mildly rubbed, spine leather with small cracks, spine and joints unobtrusively repaired. Front free endpaper with pencilled ownership inscription dated 1835; afterwards, ex–theological library: Old-fashioned bookplate on front pastedown, title-page pressure-stamped, pocket on back pastedown. Pagination erratic; several pages appearing out of order. A few corners bumped or dog-eared; a good many sections moderately browned and stained as is commonly seen with these Germantown imprints.  (27905)

Considering theA--------n R---------n

•  Although this is labelled “Second Edition,” it is printed from the same setting of type as the first edition. (Another edition of 1778, also labelled “Second Edition,” is indeed entirely reset and has a shorter collation.) The work attempts to convey the substance of several Parliamentary speeches concerning the American controversy, with at least one Cassandra saying the Franco-American alliance cannot last, and another doubting the war can have any lasting effect on the British economy. Click the image for an enlargement.

•  Adams, American Controversy, 78-102b; Sabin 95788.   Sewn, later wrappers applied; some foxing. Four leaves chipped along the outer margin, not affecting text. Without the final blank (only); with the half-title. A very good, clean copy.  (25497)

Thomas à K forAmerican Methodists
    Ownership Marks to Dream On?

•  Early American printing of John Wesley's abridged version of the Imitatio Christi, following the London first edition of 1741. This was one of a series of works published by John Dickins, an early Methodist preacher, for the use of Methodist Societies in the U.S.; Dickins's publishing operation eventually became the Methodist Publishing House, still in business today as the United Methodist Publishing House.

Provenance: An interesting array of ownership inscriptions: “Abigail Davis Book Given her By her Friend [Master?] Vaughan” — “Abigail Davis Book”— “Abigail Davis” — “Abigail Vaughan, Her Book,” this last written largest of all.  (“Reader, I married him”?)

•  Evans 27179; ESTC W33646.   Contemporary sheep, binding overall showing scuffs and small cracks. Endpapers and fly-leaf with early inked ownership inscriptions; title-page verso institutionally rubber-stamped. Pages age-toned and spotted, with intermittent pencilled bracketing; a few leaves starting to separate. (20808)

SomeoneHad to Be . . .
   . . . NORTH CAROLINA's First

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•  Somebody had to be North Carolina’s first native born poet and the task/honor was Joseph Thomas’s, and he did it with A Poetical Descant! It is scarce, having been printed in small format in a small town by a very small-time printer for a rather small audience. Thomas’s other publications include a hymnal and short works of theology (totally fitting given that he was an itinerant preacher), and an autobiography.

•  Wegelin, American Poetry, 1168; Shaw & Shoemaker 39076. Recent quarter cloth with blue-green paper sides, in the style of early 19th-centry American books. Ex–mercantile library with a few stamps, including on title-page. Two letters of title abraded and mostly invisible, yet, still, a clean copy.

OriginalPRINTED Boards & Three Plates Signed by Anderson

•  Later American edition and in early American printed boards, now VERY scarce as such. James Thomson (1700–48), Scottish poet and dramatist, was one of the most influential poets of his day; he is perhaps best remembered for “The Seasons” whose sections were published separately — Winter in 1726, Summer in 1727, Spring in 1728, and Autumn in 1730. The complete poem was published in 1730 and inspired numerous imitators and admirers, such as Coleridge and Haydn, who composed an oratorio from its German translation.

The added engraved title-page here is embellished with engravings from the designs of Richard Westall, and the frontispiece and added title-page were engraved by John Scoles. Among the four wood-engraved illustrations for the seasons, three are definitely by Alexander Anderson. “Spring” and “Summer” are signed “Anderson” and “Winter” is signed “A.”

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 42282; Pomeroy, Alexander Anderson, 565a.   Uncut and partially unopened copy. Publisher's printed paper over boards softly rubbed, obscuring some printing detail; very fragile, with joints cracked and weak, paper of spine cracked and chipped. Initials “JSH” inked on front free endpaper; a different monogram inked at top of title-page. All plates in nice impressions and frontispiece with protective tissue guard; some foxing/offsetting to this and engraved title-page opposite. Very evocative.  (9907)

Grammar Dictionary & Religious Texts in Quichua/Quechua

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•  Interest during the Enlightenment in “the noble savage” helped to reawaken interest in the study of New World languages and that in turn resulted in some long out-of-print works of the early 17th century being reprinted or revised and reprinted.

Torres Rubio (1547–1638) was a native of Spain and a Jesuit: He arrived in Peru in 1579 and devoted himself to the study of both Aymara and Quechua, publishing an Aymara grammar in 1616 and his Quechua grammar in 1619. The latter work was reprinted in 1701 at which time Juan de Figueredo (1646–1723), another Jesuit, made some revisions and added a section, “Vocabulario de la lengua chinchaisuyo, y algunos modos mas usados de ella” being the “first work known to include a section on the grammar and vocabulary of the dialect [of Quechua] common to Lima. The earlier Quechua grammars and dictionaries were based on Quechua as spoken in Upper Peru and in and around Cuzco.” This third edition includes that added material.

In addition to the grammar and dictionary the work includes in Quechua a confessionary, the questions asked during the wedding ceremony, the Litany of Blessed Virgin Mary, and “the hymn and prayer devoted to the taking out of the Holy Scripture that is sung in various of the churches of this diocese every day.”

Provenance:  In an 18th-century hand, “Es de . . . Dn. Mariano Navia de Bolaño. On rear pastedown, “Collated perfect. May 22d / [18]94 J.J.”

•  Medina, Lima, 1068; Medina, Lenguas quechua y aymará, 39; Viñaza 336; Sabin 96271; Leclerc, Bibliotheca Americana, 2409. Not in DeBacker-Sommervogel.   Contemporary limp vellum with remnants of ties, yapp edges. Very limited, rather neat pinhole worming; occasional spots of soil and paper somewhat browned in some sections due to nature of water in manufacture; inscriptions as above and one page of the vocabulary with contemporary annotation. A very nice, crisp copy.  (28399)

A Big Book Documenting a Big Era

•  “Three themes dominate the period covered by this book . . . the consolidation of the new nation-states . . . religious persecution and the wars between Catholic and Protestant . . . the expansion of Europe over the whole world” (from the dust-jacket). The volume is extensively illustrated in color and black-and-white; this is a work of art reference as well as historical reference.

•  Publisher's terra-cotta cloth, front cover and spine with gilt-stamped title, corners bumped yet cloth pristine, in dust-jacket; wrapper with wear at corners and spine extremities, one short edge tear to upper front edge. Pages age-toned; clean and unmarked.  (26183)

Party Strife!
     New York State Senate — 1806

•  A wall posting of the so-called “Lewisites” or “Quids,” the faction of the Democratic-Republican party that supported Gov. Morgan Lewis of New York against the faction led by New York City Mayor DeWitt Clinton. It is a direct reply to a handbill circulated by “A Republican of 1776,” who assailed the character of three candidates for State Senate in the Western District, Evans Wharry, Freegift Patchin, and Joseph Annin. Much of the text presents a defense of the incorporation of the Merchants' Bank. Printed in triple columns.

Rare: We fail to trace any copies via OCLC; only one holding listed in Shaw & Shoemaker.

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 11490.   As issued, with old folds, edges slightly irregular. Two tiny holes within text, at the point where two folds intersect, and costing only a portion of two letters. Fingernail-sized stain. Four words have been redacted by the previous owner in ink, but can still be easily read.  (24636)

The First Facsimile of theOriginal Manuscript of the Declaration of Independence

United States.  Continental Congress. 

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•  Following the battering the United States took in the War of 1812, there was a renewed interest in America about its heroic beginnings and its Founding Fathers: Three editions of the Federalist Papers were printed 1817–18; the journal, acts and proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 were published in 1819; and the secret journals of the acts and proceedings of the Continental Congress were first published in 1820.

Also attracting renewed interest was The Declaration of Independence: Americans and especially several entrepreneurs rediscovered the majesty of it and its wording. But it was not the Declaration as it came from a printing press that was of interest, rather it was the version indited by Charles Thomson, the Secretary of the Continental Congress. Coincidentally, this interest in the manuscript coincided with an upswing in the general upspringing writing masters and the publication of writing books that taught clerks, storekeepers, secretaries, and the interested populace how to write clearly and elegantly.

One of those entrepreneurial writing masters was Benjamin Owen Tyler and in 1818 he publishedthe first facsimile of the Declaration in its manuscript form. In 1817 he travelled to Washington and obtained the permission of Acting Secretary of State Richard Rush (son of Signer Benjamin Rush) to have access to the original manuscript so that he could engross his facsimile. As the facsimile proclaims: “The publisher designed and executed the ornamental writing, and has been particular to copy the facsimilies exact, and has also observed the same punctuation, and copied every capital as in the original.” The engraving also contains in attestation a facsimile signed statement of Richard Rush dated 10 September 10 and the seal of the Secretary of State's Office authenticating the copy.

The Tyler Declaration is not a one-to-one reproduction of the 1776 manuscript, for it incorporates decorative lettering not found in Thomson's original. But it certainly gives a feel for the original and it was a great advertising vehicle for Tyler as a writing master.

The whole LARGE production wasengraved by Peter Maverick, one of America's master engravers, and printed on paper with a few copies on parchment and at least one on silk. Many other facsimiles would follow. . .

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 46130.; Nash 87; John Bidwell, “American History in Image and Text” in Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, 1988, Vol. 98, pp. 247–302.   Document backed onto linen, edged with red linen tape, well-attached to an ebonized wood molding at head and roller at foot; age-toned or possibly showing discoloration from the mounting adhesive. One small piece of blank margin expertly readhered; some creasing. Overall very good. An impressive American document evoking not one but two significant patriotic periods, and one in safe and attractive condition for display.   (In its picture, it's hanging for the time being on one of our shop walls — comfortably!)   (29408)

The Declaration inNear-Microscopic! Italic

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•  The Declaration of Independence set forth in very small format. In this engraved printing the text is written in a tiny, tiny italic hand, with some phrases emphasized in all capital serif roman letters or in all capital sans serif letters in bold. The text is contained within a border composed of state seals and a top-central portrait of Washington, all connected with an intertwining “chain” of laurel and oak-leaf design.

The signers' facsimile signatures appear below the main italic text and within the decorative border.

Bidwell and WorldCat locateonly five institutional copies, none west of Charlottesville, VA.

•  Bidwell, “American history in image and text” (Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, v. 98, pt. 2, 1988), 15; Printing the Mind of Man 220 (for first edition).   Printed on white-coated card stock. Very Good condition.  (28506)

Maintaining the U.S. Public Credit1814 Style

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•  “Read, and committed to the committee of the whole House on the report of the Committee of Ways and Means on so much of the president’s message as relates to the finances of the United States.”

The prosecution of the War of 1812 had left the U.S. in debt and, invited by committee chairman John W. Eppes to opine, the Secretary of the Treasury A.J. Dallas here offers an extended analysis of how the national debt was incurred, notes that “it becomes the object first and last in every practical scheme of finance, to re-animate the confidence of the citizens,” and observes it as a state of things that must not continue that specie is being hoarded, banks are not lending, and a regularized national currency is lacking, so that “the monied transactions of private life are at a stand; and the fiscal operations of the government labour with extreme inconvenience.” Fortunately, he says, there are solutions, and he outlines these in a series of proposals including “taxes, duties, imposts, and excises,” reaching even unto “addition[s] of 100 per cent. on the present auction duties . . . [and] on the existing duties upon carriages.”

Occupying pp. 21–22 is record of the “schedule of new taxes referred to in the letter of the secretary of the Treasury . . . in which the taxes proposed . . . are principally adopted.”

But Secretary Dallas realized that the solution was not as simple as raising taxes or even doing that and instituting new ones. It would be necessary to issue bonds, and to do that the U.S. needed to establish a national bank: These propositions are canvassed here.

The act incorporating a national bank passed Congress in 1816.

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 33249.   Disbound and now laid into marbled paper wrappers, pamphlet age-toned and foremargins with noticeable foxing and staining; paper good and the whole readable in several senses.  (29861)

Selling (Forming) Mississippi (& Alabama)

•  Via this agreement, Georgia turned over to the U.S. its claim to land south of Tennessee and west of the “Chatahochie” River, for the express purpose of creating the future state of Mississippi; the new territory would eventually result in the creation of Alabama and Mississippi. In return it received the sum of $1,250,000. A sticking point, but one ultimately resolved, was the problem of land in Georgia set aside for the Creek Indians by a treaty in 1798. Click the image for an enlargement.

This is the true 1802 printing: In 1804 it was reprinted in 8 pages as a preface to other related documents (Report of the Commissioners appointed in pursuance of An Act for the Amicable Settlement of Limits with the States of Georgia ... : 29th November, 1804 (p. [9]-28); and Documents accompanying the Report of the Commissioners on the Georgia Mississippi Territory, Ceded to the United States: Feb. 10, 1803 (p. [29]-140)). That 8-page reprint is sometimes found by itself without its required accompaniments and in fact is miscatalogued in Shaw & Shoemaker (3343).

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 3344. Recent paper wrappers. Slightly age-toned, otherwise clean.

Abolishing “Traffick” — Proposing “Colinization”

•  Resolution authorizing the president to negotiate with foreign governments to abolish the slave trade and to negotiate with Great Britain to establish a colony in Sierra Leone for free blacks. Government document: House document (United States. Congress. House); 14th Congress, 2nd session, no. 77. Printed at head of title: [77].

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 42596; Library Company, Afro-Americana, 10583.   Removed from a nonce volume. Lightly pencilled librarian's notation on p. [1]. Very mild foxing.  (18436)

Back to Africa?

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•  An early document of the American Colonization Society, founded in December 1816. Concerns the feasibility of negotiating with Great Britain to establish a colony of free blacks in Sierra Leone. Government document: House document (United States. Congress. House); 14th Congress, 2nd session, no. 78. Printed at head of title: [78].

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 42738; Library Company, Afro-Americana, 10602.   Removed from a nonce volume. Lightly pencilled librarian's notation on p. [1]. Leaves separated.  (18440)

An Irish-AMERICAN'S Service & Claims

•  Oliver Pollock, an Irish-born American merchant, claims remuneration for losses sustained in his capacity as commercial agent for the United States at Orleans during the American Revolution.

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 14058. Removed from a nonce volume. Librarian's lightly pencilled notation on title-page. Stray brown spots. Very good. (18017)

North Carolinians . . . Petition Congress

•  The petitioners seek to have Plymouth, North Carolina, made a port of entry; the committee recommends against it.

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 14060. Removed from a library-style pamphlet binding and in new wrappers.

Indiana Already Wants to Join the Union — 1812

•  Concerns a resolution to admit Indiana into the Union as a state. The territory was then in the midst of great population growth of settlers and still being convulsed occasionally by wars and battles with the Native American population, etc., but was of stature to seek admission as a state — which it achieved in 1816.
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•  Shaw & Shoemaker 27339. In modern wrappers, old sewing holes; age-toned.

Treasury Department Copy

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•  Extremely detailed accounting of appropriations and expenditures. Both reports were submitted by Samuel Meredith, the first treasurer of the United States; both of these government documents are not commonly seen in institutional holdings save in microform.

Provenance: A Treasury Department Library copy, with bookplate of that institution on the front pastedown. Gilt-stamped leather labels on spine state “1798” and “First Comp’t Office”; gilt-stamped leather labels on front cover state “Register’s Office” and “Treasurer's Accounts.”

•  Evans 34885, 36541, & 36595. Contemporary or very early19th-century library sheep, spine and front gilt-stamped on green and red leather labels (as described above); binding much rubbed and abraded, with some peeling of leather and loss at head and foot of spine; front cover detached. Remnants of old paper label adhered near inner edge of front cover. Pages clean save for some offsetting.

Freedom of the Press — Philadelphia, 1800

• Was it slander or libel, or exercising the freedom of the press (or both) — when on 19 February 1800 William Duane published an article concerning the secret activities occurring in Senate caucuses? In any case the senators were not pleased! In this publication they quote the offending passages and then order Duane to appear before them to defend “his conduct” and the Aurora’s for having published “the aforesaid false, defamatory, scandalous, and malicious assertions and pretended information.”

At the heart of the controversy was Duane’s support of Jefferson for president and his exposure of the notorious Ross election bill by which the Federalists sought to thwart Jefferson’s bid for that office.

• Evans 38856; ESTC W021879. Removed from a nonce volume. Clean and in nice condition.

“United States Register” —For English Reference 1794

•  Uncommon British reprint of an American work originally printed in Philadelphia. Although no calendrical information is present, much other material commonly found in almanacs is: lists of government officials by state, population statistics (categorized by free white males and females, slaves, and “other persons”), and duties payable on assorted goods.

•  ESTC T105844. Period-style quarter calf with marbled paper–covered sides, spine with gilt-stamped leather title-label and gilt-ruled raised bands. Title-page and a few others stamped by a now-defunct institution. Some offsetting to margins of first and final leaves, pages otherwise clean. A nice little Anglo-Americanum, very evocative of its era.

TO Part XX . . .

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