Maine Antique Digest March 2015

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4-C Maine Antique Digest, March 2015
- AUCTION -
Besides rarities (especially early ones) and
unique material from any period and lots such
as the Cogswell diary with research potential,
buyers were also willing to pay big for scarce
images of significant subjects. An albumen print
of a photograph made in Shanghai in 1879, for
example, went to the dealer Loewentheil for
$18,750 (est. $2500/3500). It was a double por-
trait of former U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant
and Li Hongzhang, China’s leading military
figure of the late 19th century. The two met
while Grant was on a diplomatic tour of Asia,
during which he was asked to intercede on Chi-
na’s behalf after Japan declared its intention to
annex the Ryukyu Islands. Mounted with a let-
ter presenting the photo to a judge in 1931, it
sparked such a competition that Nicholas Lowry
remarked afterward, “An epic battle, fitting for
two generals.”
In the same category of visual material, a
small (3½" x 7¼") watercolor and ink, The
Omaha and Ottoe Mission at Bellevue from
the East, painted but unsigned by frontier artist
Stanislas W.Y. Schimonsky, made $16,250 (est.
$4000/6000). The circa 1855 image depicts a
Presbyterian mission that served two tribes of
Native Americans. Schimonsky painted five
Indians into the foreground. The building, at the
fork of the Missouri River and Papillion Creek,
was later used as a district court and then a hotel.
A steamboat is part of the scene. It’s possibly the
Nebraska, which employed Samuel L. Clemens,
a.k.a. Mark Twain, in 1861.
“Very little of Schimonsky’s art is known to
have survived,” said Stattler. “I couldn’t find
any of his work at auction and very few exam-
ples in institutions.” The picture came from a
dealer, and the buyer went to the Museum of
Nebraska Art, Kearney, Nebraska.
Bidders made a clean sweep of the Mormon
material on offer at this sale. A first edition of
The Book of Mormon sold to a collector for
$62,500 (est. $40,000/60,000). Published in Pal-
myra, NewYork, in 1830, this edition is the only
one that lists Joseph Smith as “author and pro-
prietor” rather than “translator.” It also includes
Smith’s two-page preface. These come to auc-
tion fairly often, and a spate of others have gone
unsold at other auction houses in the last couple
of years. According to Stattler, this was the high-
est auction price realized for one since 2008. A
second edition, published in Kirtland, Ohio, in
1837, fetched $18,750 (est. $4000/6000).
A first American edition of The Pearl of
Great Price by Joseph Smith went for $2080
(est. $500/750). An unpublished letter on the
subject of Smith’s search for a printer for The
Book of Mormon was a hit, going at $13,750
(est. $4000/6000). It was written by a New York
newspaper publisher involved with politics,
Thurlow Weed, who himself refused to publish
the book. The letter was originally laid into The
Book of Mormon owned by one of America’s
greatest bibliophiles, Thomas W. Streeter. It
came to this sale from the Forbes collection and
went into another private collection.
A second, juicy Mormon letter, written by
one of Brigham Young’s ex-wives, sold to a
collector for $16,250 (est. $3000/4000). It is 13
pages long and describes at length Ann Eliza
Young’s five-year marriage to the Latter Day
Saint movement’s leader. For the record, she
was Mrs. Young number 19. There were ump-
teen to follow. She wrote the 13-page letter on
May 20, 1881, to Jennie Froiseth, who was writ-
ing a book titled The Women of Mormonism; or
The Story of Polygamy as Told by the Victims
Themselves. According to the catalog, the letter
included discussions of the other wives and their
internal politics, as well as the declaration that
marriage 19 was never consummated.
Avery different marriage began on November
25, 1913, exactly 101 years prior to this sale. It
was the wedding of Woodrow Wilson’s daugh-
ter Jessie at the White House. An archive was
kept by one of the wedding guests, Dr. DeWitt
Scoville Clark Jr., an old friend of the groom,
Francis Bowes Sayre Sr. Clark also served as an
usher. The lot included Clark’s invitations to the
rehearsal dinner and wedding, along with the
gloves, tie, stickpin, and boutonniere he wore
on these occasions. From the Forbes collection,
the archive sold within estimate for $3250 to an
unidentified institution.
The next Swann sale will be on April 14, right
after the New York Antiquarian Book Fair on
April 9-12. For more information, phone Swann
The 557-page letter book of 18th-century Boston merchant
Thomas Russell fetched $75,000 (est. $12,000/18,000). Sold
to benefit Historic Deerfield, it covered the period December
8, 1777, to October 4, 1781, during which time the merchant
wrote 90 letters to the American Revolution’s financier, Robert
Morris Jr.
This 9" x 11½" albumen print of former U.S. President
Ulysses S. Grant and Chinese General Li Hongzhang at a
meeting in Shanghai in 1879 sold for $18,750. The photog-
rapher was Liang Shitai (a.k.a See Tay), who signed it in the
negative. The photo, with a long scratch in the image area
and retouching, was mounted with a letter presenting the
photo to an American judge in 1931.
The 41-page manu-
script diary of Josiah
Goodrich (1731-1764), a
lieutenant in the French
and Indian War, sold
for $47,500. It includes
an account of the Bat-
tle of Ticonderoga, in
which Goodrich fought
as part of the 5th Com-
pany of Connecticut
Militia. The diary cov-
ers the period June 2 to
November 30, 1759.
A dealer on the phone paid $13,750 (est. $3000/4000) for Canyon
City, Colorado, and Surroundings by Alfred E. Mathews. Published
in New York in 1870, it is a rarity. The great American bibliophile
Thomas W. Streeter had one; it was sold at Parke-Bernet in 1968,
during the series of four auctions held after his death in 1965. Only
one has been known at auction since.
“Money begets money,” said Nicholas Lowry when this
fractional currency shield sold to an absentee bidder for
$4000 (est. $2000/3000). The 24" x 20½" engraving has
39 mounted specimen notes. Produced by the Treasury
Department around 1867 or 1868, it was designed as an
aid in the detection of counterfeits among the fractionals
issued during the Civil War. “Those are well known to
currency collectors, but they don’t turn up much here,”
said Rick Stattler. “I think we got a currency-collector
price.”
The Forbes collection’s
first American edition of
Adam Smith’s An Inquiry
into the Nature and Causes
of the Wealth of Nations,
in three volumes, sold on
line for a within-estimate
$8450. “I imagine that
was partly on the strength
of the provenance—for
a wealthy man’s copy of
The Wealth of Nations ,”
Rick Stattler observed.
Published in Philadelphia
in 1789, the book was pre-
viously owned by Robert
Lowther, who dated and
inscribed it on August
16, 1791, “Steal not this
book for fear of shame for
underneath is the owner’s
name.” A little looking
on the Internet did not
turn up anything about
Lowther. Stattler’s more
thorough search didn’t
either.
The Omaha and Ottoe Mission at Bellevue from the
East, Stanislas W.Y. Schimonsky (b. circa 1824),
$16,250 (est. $4000/6000). The Wyoming State
Library Web site says that Schimonsky immigrated
to the United States in 1848 after graduating from
the Polytechnique School in Berlin and serving in
the engineering corps of the Prussian Army. He was
a surveyor in Nebraska as well as an artist. A bit of
an inventor, he received a patent for an improved
railway car brake while working as an assistant
engineer on the Transcontinental Railroad.