Rare Book Monthly
Book Catalogue Reviews - August - 2006 Issue
The Final Arthur H. Clark Catalogue (To Be Continued)
Washington Territorial Governor George E. Cole.
Almost every collector collects books about some event, but how about 100-year anniversaries of important events? Item 5 is the Proceedings of the Bunker Hill Monument Association...and An Account of the Centennial Celebration, June 17, 1875. The Battle of Bunker Hill occurred over a year before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, as already independence-minded Bostonians and New Englanders were at war with the British colonialists. Bunker Hill was a bloody battle, which the British technically won, but in which they suffered great casualties. It showed that the colonists could fight, and the British could be brutal. It would become a rallying cry throughout the colonies, which would help ignite the revolution to follow. This centennial publication is now older than the battle itself was at the time it was published, the bicentennial of Bunker Hill now long since passed too. Priced at $45.
Here is another centennial: Souvenir Program: United States Flag Centennial. Published in 1946, it commemorates the capture of Monterrey by American forces during the Mexican War. Item 6. $12.50.
Alexander Barclay certainly enjoyed a variety of careers, from exciting western trailblazer to boring office worker. The title of George Hammond's biography says it all: The Adventures of Alexander Barclay, Mountain Man, from London Corsetier to Pioneer Farmer in Canada, Bookkeeper in St. Louis, Superintendent of Bent's Fort, Fur Trader and Mountain Man in Colorado and New Mexico, Builder of Barclay's Fort on the Santa Fe Trail, New Mexico in 1848: a narrative of his career, 1810 to 1855; his memorandum diary, 1845 to 1850. Corsetier to mountain man? Bookkeeper to fur trader? A strange and interesting life indeed! Item 233. Published in 1976. $75.
George Cole was one of the many who followed the Oregon Trail to a new life in the west. He was one of the more successful. He would be successful in business, serve in the Oregon legislature, and eventually become Territorial Governor of Washington from 1866-1867. However, he was technically only an acting governor, as due to political battles in the capitol, the Senate refused to ratify any of President Andrew Johnson's appointments at the time. Much later, a year before his death in 1906, Cole published this account of his early days: Early Oregon jottings of personal recollections of a pioneer of 1850. Item 348. $65.
