American Historical Documents and Signatures from Joe Rubinfine
Document signed by Washington and Jefferson on cover of Joe Rubinfine's latest catalogue.
By Michael Stillman
Joe Rubinfine has issued his List 160 of American Historical Autographs. Rubinfine regularly puts together top-level collections of important American signatures and documents. This catalogue is dominated by important political and military personalities, with a scattering of literary and other figures. There are presidents from Washington to Ike, generals from…well…Washington to Ike, Custer and Sioux warrior Rain In The face, writers such as Thoreau and Hawthorne, several signers of the Declaration of Independence, and a few poignant letters from widowed first ladies. Here are some samples.
Item 1, pictured on the cover of this catalogue, is a document signed by President George Washington and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson in 1793. In three languages (English, French, and Dutch) it assures every imaginable diplomat that Captain Joshua Merrill and the Brig Polly are American noncombatants engaged in peaceable trade. These were the days when the European powers were constantly either at war with one another or planning to start one. This document, signed by America's leaders, would hopefully reassure officials in St. Croix (where the ship was headed) and elsewhere the Polly was in no way connected to ongoing European hostilities. How could a ship named the Polly be warlike anyway? Priced at $22,000.
John Hancock signatures are among the most collectible of all American autographs for reasons obvious to anyone who has ever seen the Declaration of Independence. Item 9 is one of his signatures, as President of the Continental Congress, appointing Samuel Loring a Second Lieutenant in the infantry. It is dated January 1 of that famous year, 1776. $9,500.
Thomas Jefferson was not one of those presidents who became wealthy from his position. He was always battling debts, trying to find ways to pay them off. Item 14 is a letter from 1802 when he was serving as President to Dr. William Bache, Benjamin Franklin's grandson. He owed money to Franklin's grandson too. Fortunately, he is able to write Bache that his cousin, George Jefferson, has $143.33 waiting for him in Richmond. $25,000.
Documents from the presidency of William Henry Harrison are the hardest to find, Harrison surviving but one month in office. Those he signed as president are virtually impossible to find. Item 19 is the next best thing. It is a grant of land in Wisconsin to one Harvey Durkee, dated March 25, 1841, and signed with Harrison's name by his secretary, N.P. Cousin. A week later Harrison died. $1,750.
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American Historical Documents and Signatures from Joe Rubinfine
President John Tyler cannot explain Senate's rejection of Silas Reed.
Harrison's widow, Anna, had it unbelievably hard. She never made it to the White House, too ill to travel until spring. Spring never arrived for the Harrison administration. But, despite her illness, Anna Harrison not only outlived her husband, but nine of her ten children. Only one was still alive when she wrote this letter to her grandson, J. Cleves Harrison, in 1846. She relays news about several of Cleves' cousins and tells him not to expect her to answer every letter as she is "too old to write much." She admonishes him not to pass up his intended visit to her with the words, "you must remember that I am very old, & as none of us know the time of our death, yet to one, threescore and ten of course, but a few Months, perhaps days are allotted to them." Grandma was laying it on a bit thick. She lived another 16 years. Another of Anna Harrison's grandsons, Benjamin Harrison, would be elected president in 1888. And what's more, Cleves Harrison's other grandfather was American explorer Zebulon Pike, of Pike's Peak fame. There's a lot of namedropping associated with this item. Item 56. $2,500.
Item 57 is a deeply moving letter from Lucretia Garfield, recent widow of President James Garfield, written to two friends in 1882. Her husband had died a few months earlier, the victim of an assassin's bullet. In her writing, she faces the ultimate question -- "I sometimes imagine faint gleamings from the other world do begin to appear but I have been so lost in the night that I scarcely dare trust them. If I only could know that somewhere in the great Universe General Garfield still lives -- my husband -- loving and thinking of me and waiting for I think I could submit to this inevitable which has so changed all my life...if not with happiness at least with patience." $1,250.
Item 21 is an odd presidential signed document. It's a ship's passport, issued in New Bedford, Massachusetts, dated June 5, 1841, and signed by Martin Van Buren as President. One problem here. On June 5, 1841, Martin Van Buren was no longer president. In fact, he had been out of office three months. The entire short-lived Harrison administration had passed and John Tyler now held the office. The evident explanation is that the President had pre-signed some of these forms and the authorities in New Bedford used one of them later on, even though Van Buren was no longer president. $2,250.
Speaking of the new President, John Tyler, on October 28, 1841, he responded to office seeker Silas Reed. Reed had been appointed by Harrison to be Surveyor General of Illinois and Missouri. The Senate had rejected his nomination, but Tyler was baffled as to why. In response to Reed he writes, "...all that I can say in reply is, that I sincerely regretted your defeat before the Senate, but am not able to assign any particular cause for it. Nothing has been communicated to me at any time to alter my good opinion of you. What the Senate may have had before it, or on what view they acted I am wholly unable to say..." Reed's nomination would be brought up again, and this time he was approved. He would be appointed Surveyor General of the Wyoming Territory by President Grant in 1870. Item 20. $4,000.
Joe Rubinfine may be reached at 561-659-7077 or Joerubinfine@mindspring.com.
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