Maine Antique Digest May 2015

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12-B Maine Antique Digest, May 2015
- auction -
James D. Julia kicked off its 2015
auction year with a three-day selling
binge of over 2000 lots and a grand
total of more than $3.5 million on Feb-
ruary 4-6 in Fairfield, Maine. According
to the post-sale press release, over 5000
Internet bidders representing 61 countries
competed with the phones, absentee bid-
ders, and attendees at the sale.
The auction was rife with items of
esoteric historical significance. One lot
focused on Thomas “Blind Tom” Wiggins
(1849-1908), who was born into slavery
at a time before autism was recognized
and is now understood to have been an
autistic savant. During the 19th century,
he was one of the best-known American
performing pianists. Blind from birth,
Wiggins was sold at an auction in 1850,
along with his parents, to James Bethune,
a Georgia lawyer, as a “throw-in.” At age
four, Tom started to display an intuitive
piano ability after listening to Bethune’s
daughters play, and by age five he had
reportedly composed his first tune. Wig-
gins frequently turned natural sounds,
such as the beating of rain on a tin roof
or the crowing of a rooster, into musical
compositions.
By age eight, Wiggins was recognized
as a musical prodigy and was touring
extensively throughout the South. Over
his lifetime he earned his promoters the
equivalent of around $5 million in today’s
money. He could accurately mimic a con-
versation of up to ten minutes in length
but could communicate on his own only
with minimal words, grunts, and gestures.
Of one of his performances, an unsigned
1894 review in the Nebraska State Jour-
nal that has been attributed to author Willa
Cather stated, “It was a strange sight to
see him walk out on the stage and with
his own lips—and another man’s words—
introduce himself and talk quietly about
his own idiocy.... There was an insanity,
a grotesque horribleness about it that was
interestingly unpleasant.... One laughs at
the man’s queer actions, and yet, after all,
the sight is not laughable. It brings us too
near to the things that we sane people do
not like to think of.”
Atrove of over 50 pieces of sheet music,
broadsides, and photographs related
to Blind Tom had come from a private
local history museum formerly run by
George Greene (d. 2014) in Phenix City,
Alabama. The lot included newspapers
advertising Tom’s concerts, broadsides,
sheet music, photographs, cartes de vis-
ite, and more. It also contained a phren-
ological journal with a full page dedi-
cated to Blind Tom. According to the cat-
alog, the whole collection took an entire
room to display at Greene’s museum.
The collection sold for $29,625 (includ-
ing buyer’s premium), easily besting the
$10,000/20,000 estimate.
A medal commemorating the ill-fated
Jeannette expedition to the Arctic in
1879-82 caused a small stir. The Jean-
nette was privately owned but sailed
under naval orders with a crew of 33 men.
Under the command of Lieutenant George
W. DeLong (1844-1881), the expedition
is credited with discovering three of the
uninhabited islands in the East Siberian
Sea now known as the DeLong Islands:
Jeannette, Henrietta, and Bennett Islands.
The Jeanette became trapped in an ice
pack in the Chukchi Sea in September
1879. It eventually was crushed by ice and
sank in 1881. DeLong and his crew then
attempted to traverse the ice pack to Sibe-
ria, pulling their supplies and three small
boats. One boat team was lost and never
found. DeLong’s company reached land,
but only the two strongest men were then
sent ahead for aid. Those were the only
two of DeLong’s boat to survive. The cap-
tain himself perished of starvation, and
the third boat was eventually rescued.
Herbert W. Leach, born in 1858 in
North Penobscot, Maine, was among the
survivors on the rescued boat. Only 13 of
the original company of 33 survived the
expedition. Leach was awarded a Con-
gressional silver medal with the inscrip-
tions “Jeannette Arctic Expedition 1879-
1882,” “In Commemoration of Perils
Encountered and as an Expression of the
High Esteem in which Congress Holds
His Services,” and “Act Approved Sept.
30. 1890.” According to Julia’s catalog,
eight gold and 25 silver medals were
struck by the Philadelphia Mint and were
awarded to the survivors or families of
the deceased. The medal at Julia’s auction
descended in the family of Herbert Leach
and had changed hands at least once
before arriving at the auction. It has now
been returned to a Leach family member.
The buyer at $21,330 was Mainer Fer-
nald Leach, a great-nephew of Herbert
Leach. He may not be keeping the medal
to himself for long. Several museums,
including the Maine State Museum and
the Wilson Museum in Castine, Maine,
have expressed an interest in displaying
it. “[Herbert] Leach lost his big toe and
some of the others. He was the last to die
of the whole group.... He died in 1935,”
Fernald Leach told me later, adding that
the medal “will probably wind up in one
of the museums. I couldn’t sell it.”
As we’ve often seen before, Asian
antiques came on strong, with more than
a handful of lots wildly surpassing their
estimates. A Chinese Republic period
celadon jade scepter hit five figures at
$24,700. A 19th- or early 20th-century
Tibetan thangka of the Buddha was nailed
down at $13,585. And the $189,600 that
was paid for a bronze Ming Dynasty
sculpture of Guanyin exceeded every-
thing else in the auction.
Where else could a solid piece of cast
iron bring five grand? Here’s the back
story. On August 5, 1864, Admiral David
Farragut (1801-1870) was in command of
the flagship U.S.S. Hartford at the Battle
of Mobile Bay in Alabama. Lashed to the
rigging, he hollered through a trumpet to
the nearby U.S.S. Brooklyn, “What’s the
trouble?” The shouted answer came back
“Torpedoes,” to which Farragut report-
edly replied, “Damn the torpedoes! Four
bells, Captain Drayton. Go ahead, Jouett,
full speed. ” His words have been popu-
larly reinterpreted as “Damn the torpe-
does! Full speed ahead!”
According to Norman Flayderman,
who cataloged the cannonball for one
of its previous sales, the 8" cannonball
offered by Julia was fired from the Con-
federate Fort Morgan on shore, came
whistling by, and landed on the deck of
the Hartford, doing virtually no damage.
The missile was donated to a New York
historical society, where it remained for
132 years until 1996. There had been a
couple of ownership changes since then.
It brought $5332.50.
For more information visit (www.
) or call (207) 453-7125.
James D. Julia, Inc. Fairfield, Maine
Julia Opens for $3.5 Million
by Mark Sisco
Photos courtesy James D. Julia, Inc.
Where else could
a solid piece of
cast iron bring five
grand?
The 8" cannonball that missed killing
Admiral David Farragut aboard the U.S.S.
Hartford at the Battle of Mobile Bay when it
fell intact onto the deck of the ship brought
$5332.50.
Congressional silver medal
commemorating the Jean-
nette Arctic expedition, 1879-
82, given to team member
Herbert Leach, $21,330.
A collection of about 50 paper items relating to “Blind Tom” Wiggins, an autistic
savant born into slavery who showed evidence of prodigious musical talent by
age four, sold for $29,625. Wiggins died from a major stroke in 1908, having
earned fortunes for his owners and promoters but precious little for himself.
It was “strike three” for this attractive 50" x 40" (sight
size) oil on canvas portrait of a young boy in a black
dress by NewYork artist James Henry Cafferty (1819-
1869), showing the lad with his dog on a floral carpet
with a russet drape in the background. It had come up
for auction twice before, and this time nobody went
for it with a reduced estimate of $8000/12,000.