Maine Antique Digest March 2015

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36-C Maine Antique Digest, March 2015
- AUCTION -
Bruce Gamage, Rockland, Maine
Babbitt and Hyde Family Artifacts at Auction
by Mark Sisco
B ruce Gamage’s auction on
November 16, 2014, in Rock-
land, Maine, contained some
rare items from an important Amer-
ican business family, some good
American art, and a few nearly unno-
ticed sleepers that must have made
the day for their buyers.
The auction was centered on estate
items from the families of New York
industrialist Benjamin T. Babbitt
(1809-1889) and Edwin Hyde (1812-
1896). Babbitt built an enormous
fortune in the soap business. He was
also the inventor of one of the first
practical mowing machines and held
over 100 patents for ideas involving
gun barrels, steam appliances, canal
boats, artificial ice makers, and more.
A rare full-plate daguerreotype
by Abraham Bogardus (1822-1908)
showed Edwin Hyde, Elizabeth
Alvina Hyde (nee Mead), and their
family. All of the sons attained some
degree of prominence. Edwin Francis
Hyde (1842-1933) was a Civil War
veteran who fought at Harpers Ferry,
a professional banker, and a patron of
the New York Philharmonic Society
and the Metropolitan Museum. There
was a familial connection between
the Hydes and the Babbitts. Benja-
min Babbitt had two daughters, Ida
and Lillia, who married two Hyde
brothers. Ida married Frederick Eras-
tus Hyde, and Lillia married Clarence
Melville Hyde. To Lillia, Benjamin
Babbitt left controlling interest in his
company and half of his $5,000,000
estate. Lillia, who survived her hus-
band and only child, endowed the Lil-
lia Babbitt Hyde Foundation, which
still operates, now consolidated with
the John Jay and Elizabeth Jane Wat-
son Foundation as the Hyde and Wat-
son Foundation. The Author Sinclair
Lewis used the family name as a title
for his bestselling novel Babbitt, writ-
ten in 1922. The Hyde family photo
went for $2875 (including buyer’s
premium). Bogardus produced over
200,000 daguerreotypes during his
long career in New York City, which
began around 1846 with the opening
of his studio on Broadway.
Among other artifacts from the
Babbitt and Hyde families was a
flush-mounted Mathew Brady pho-
tograph of four Civil War soldiers
at Harpers Ferry from the series
“Brady’s Incidents of the War,” pub-
lished in 1861 and 1862. It sold for
$345.
Among the other notable sales was
a hand-colored copperplate engraved
map with a cartouche reading “A
MAP OF/ VIRGINIA/ AND/ MARY-
LAND/ Sold by Thomas Bassett in
Fleetstreet/ and Richard Chiswell
in St. Pauls/ Church yard./ 1676.” It
shows Virginia, Maryland, and part
of New Jersey. The date appeared to
be a later handwritten add-on, since
other examples I located were pub-
lished without a date. But the map
did appear to be a legitimate example
of a derivative of the original map of
Virginia by Captain John Smith, first
published in 1612. This one, engraved
by Francis Lamb, was published in
the posthumous 1676 edition of John
Speed’s atlas titled The Theatre of the
“Actually it’s
going to bring
north of $1000,
which might be
a sign that Vic-
torian might be
stirring up.”
An 18k gold or better three-
piece Victorian mourning
suite in a relief ram’s head
motif produced the biggest
price of the sale at $4600. A full-plate daguerreotype of the family of Edwin and Elizabeth
A. Hyde sold for $2875.
Gamage had high hopes for this Vic-
torian American walnut and marble
bedroom set with a bed, dresser, and
commode. “I thought nobody cared
about it and we’re carrying that stuff
for nothing,” he mentioned before the
sale, “but actually it’s going to bring
north of $1000, which might be a sign
that Victorian might be stirring up.”
His prediction was right. It stopped
at $1265.
A period Chippendale chest
in walnut with six graduated
drawers and original hardware,
standing on a simple cutout
bracket base, closed at $1150.
To be sure, there were some good
sleepers in the sale, but this one was
in a coma. Willem Elisa Roelofs Jr.
(1874-1940) was born in Schaarbeek,
the Netherlands and died in The
Hague. He learned to paint from his
father and produced mostly still lifes
and aquatic landscapes. His water-
colors have sold in the low thousands,
so this tabletop still life floral scene,
signed and dated “The Hague, 6 Sep
1926 /Willem E. Roelofs Jr.,” wasn’t
much of a risk at a vanishingly small
$28.75. Sometimes it pays to snoop
into obscure box lots.
This is a hand-stitched silk memorial to a young girl named
Rebekah E. Golding, who died in 1827 or 1837 (the date was
somewhat illegible) at the tender age of 15. It may have been
stitched by two different makers. On the urn memorial, the
girl’s name was spelled “Rebekah,” but in the poetic verse,
it was spelled “Rebecca.” Perhaps they didn’t know her very
well. But it sold for $345.
The three-gallon stoneware
open crock by N. A. White &
Son of Utica, New York, with
dark blue, almost black, cobalt
decorations brought $224.25.
A shadowbox diorama in a gilt-
lined tiger maple frame depicting
an unnamed three-masted schoo-
ner with square-rigged sails on
the foremast sold for $1380. Photo
courtesy Bruce Gamage.
Empire of Great Britaine. On the
back was a history and descrip-
tion of the original land grant
given to George Calvert, Lord
Baltimore, in 1632. At $1955,
there was plenty of retail room
left in it.
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