Fascinating and Unusual Americana from David Lesser Antiquarian Books
The latest Rare Americana from David Lesser.
By Michael Stillman
We have received catalogue 90 of Rare Americana from David M. Lesser Fine Antiquarian Books, and as always, it is a treat for those who collect in the field. Lesser's catalogues are filled with the unusual and obscure, though the items generally deal with the critical issues of the day. There are pamphlets of early anti-slavery societies, those that paved the way for the debates that would eventually tear the nation apart. There are accounts of major trials, perhaps forgotten today, but the ones that would have filled Court TV if Court TV had existed in the 19th century. We hear political debates, theological debates, ethnic debates, all of the disputes which occupied our ancestors' time, just as new versions of the same old issues dominate our own. Democratic-Republican splits, views for and against immigration and immigrants, separation of church and state -- none of these issues are new, they just take different forms. David Lesser's catalogues are a window on the world as experienced by ordinary Americans, and as such, they are among the most fascinating we receive. Here are a few of examples.
Davy wasn't the only Crockett to die in 1836. Simeon L. Crockett also passed away that year, but unlike the frontiersman, he was no hero. Simeon Crockett was an arsonist, who set fire to a Boston tenement. Reportedly, 100 people lost their lives in that fire. If so, Crockett became victim number 101. He was tried, convicted, confessed, and was executed. The book is A Voice from Leverett Street Prison, or the Life, Trial and Confession of Simeon L. Crockett. Who was Executed for Arson, March 16, 1836. Supposedly, his behavior was caused by drink, and this book is a temperance tract as well as a criminal history. The author was probably Edward T. Taylor, prison minister who testified to the validity of Crockett's confession. Item 35. Priced at $150.
Temperance was not only an issue for the Union. Evidently the Confederacy had drinking problems as well. This problem is elucidated in Liquor and Lincoln. By a Physician, circa 1862. The unnamed physician warns that the South will not gain its freedom from "Lincoln's usurpation" if it continues to "spend the hours and days, in drinking, gambling, and too often, alas! in obscene and profane jocularity." Better to be bowed under Lincoln's yoke, he says, "than made ourselves the willing slaves of groveling passions, and depraved appetites." Item 74. $600.
John A. Wills expressed his strong support for equal rights in 1841 in this Oration, Delivered Before the Citizens of Blairsville...(Pennsylvania). He believed that all men and women had divine rights and that the government had no business taking those away. Even the unpropertied, he believed, had equal rights to the franchise. However, the following comment seems like a bit of a backhanded compliment: "They [rights] belong alike to the Indian, the Negro, and the Asiatic -- to humanity in all its forms, however degraded and disgusting -- equally with the more favored Caucasian race." Item 140. $475.
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Fascinating and Unusual Americana from David Lesser Antiquarian Books
The Reverend Ephraim Avery - maybe he did, maybe he didn't.
The Indian Captivity, sad tales of white people captured by natives, was a favorite genre of the 18th and 19th centuries. Edwin Eastman recounted a particularly sad story in Captured and Branded by the Camanche Indians in the Year 1860. A True Narrative. Eastman witnessed his parents and only brother murdered before his eyes, his wife sold to another tribe for a few trinkets. But cry not for Edwin Eastman. The only thing true about this "true narrative" is that it was truly false. Eastman also told about this "Indian Blood Syrup," whose formula he obtained in captivity, which could cure all kinds of ailments. And guess what? Eastman had some bottles of this miraculous potion to sell you, along with his story. Item 44. $250.
Item 51 is the Obituary Notice of Isaac Hayes... Isaac Hayes is dead? We knew they killed off his "Chef" character on South Park, but Hayes himself? This is the man who gave us the "Theme from Shaft" (Academy Award winning song), co-wrote "Soul Man," was an inspiration for Barry White (okay, we'll forgive him this indiscretion), and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And now he's gone? Not so fast. This obituary is dated 1879. Hayes wasn't born until 1942. This must be a different Isaac Hayes. The earlier Hayes was a physician in Philadelphia, and evidently a highly respected man. However, we don't know whether he too was a "bad mother." $175.
Archie Cook had a bone to pick with his local medical society in Reply to the Action of the College of Physicians & Surgeons, of Louisville, KY. Cook says the Society has taken "responsibility of not only expelling, but of attempting to utterly annihilate professionally, the writer of this article." Cook's crime? He was charging $3 to examine applicants for life insurance when the official rate was set at $5. The more things change... Item 32. $250.
It was probably the worst Supreme Court decision ever. Item 60 is one of the official printings (Appleton, New York, 1857) of A Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court...in the Case of Dred Scott... It was the case in which the Court determined that black people, even free ones, effectively had no rights, and Congress had no power to exclude slavery from the new territories. Chief Justice Roger Taney may have felt he was saving the institution of slavery, but in reality, he was speeding it towards its inevitable demise. $1,750.
Item 72 is a satirical attack on the Know Nothing Party, Know Nothingism by "I Don't Know." The American Party, better known as the "Know Nothings," was a nativist political organization that rose to great prominence in the 1850s, and just as quickly disappeared. Their target was immigrants, particularly Catholics and the Irish. Speaking of the party's members, the author bitingly points out, "foreign blood, the object of his hate, Flow'd in his father's veins." $375.
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Fascinating and Unusual Americana from David Lesser Antiquarian Books
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Item 56 is A Report of the Trial of the Rev. Ephraim K. Avery...for the Murder of Sarah Maria Cornell. This was a sensational trial in Rhode Island in 1833. Ms. Cornell, who had known the Reverend since his days in Massachusetts, was found hanging from the frame of a haystack. It might have been unquestioningly attributed to suicide but for a note she left, "If I should be found missing, enquire of the Rev. Mr. Avery of Bristol, - he will know where I am." It did not help that Ms. Cornell was five months pregnant, and there were letters implicating the Reverend. Avery gave alibis of several people who would have seen him at a place and time making his participation in her death impossible, but none of these "witnesses" recalled seeing him. However, several testified to seeing a tall man, as was Rev. Avery, in the vicinity of Ms Cornell's home, though none could positively identify him. The townsfolk were ready to hang him too, but after a trial in which Avery was defended by one of the best lawyers in New England, the jury acquitted. Avery would go on a speaking tour to try to recoup lost legal funds, but he was not well received. After moving around New England a few times, but never escaping hostility, he moved on to Ohio, where he lived out his life in relative peace and obscurity, with a family that stood beside him. Avery died in 1869, with no one but he and the late Ms. Cornell knowing for sure whether he killed her, or she took her own life, implicating the Reverend as an act of revenge. $250.
You will find David Lesser Fine Antiquarian Books online at www.lesserbooks.com, phone number 203-389-8111.
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