Engineers Club Inaugural Banquet Commemorative of the Opening of the New Club House on which occasion Mr. Andrew Carnegie will be the guest of honor Monday, the ninth of December 1907. [New York: Engineer's Club], [1907]

Signed by Mark Twain, Thomas Edison, and Andrew Carnegie (who has signed twice), and others. This event commemorated the opening of the Engineers Club’s fabulous new home at 32 West 40th Street on Bryant Park in New York.

$12,000

Daguerreotype portrait of John Romeyn Brodhead. London: Mayall, 1848

A splendid half-plate daguerreotype of Herman Melville’s advisor and agent John Brodhead, scholar and diplomat.

John Romeyn Brodhead (1814-1873) was a historian and a member of the American diplomatic corps. Best remembered for his services as Herman Melville’s agent in London, Brodhead had known Melville and his family since their youth.

$11,000

Stumbling Bear, Kiowa Chief. Fort Sill, Indian Territory, c. 1869-74

Photographer Will Soule arrived at Fort Sill in Indian Territory in late 1869 or early 1870. Fort Sill was then a military headquarters and agency for several Indian tribes, including the Kiowa.  Before returning to Boston in 1874, Soule made an important series of Native American portraits, including this charismatic image of Chief Stumbling Bear.

$9,500

Cornelius Vanderbilt, vignetted standing portrait. [New York: Mathew Brady Studio, 1860s.]

Founder of the Vanderbilt business dynasty, Cornelius Vanderbilt made his fortune first in steamships and shipping and then in railroads. His career spanned the birth of the steamship and the development of the great American railroad networks. He was “the oldest and perhaps the greatest of the nineteenth-century railroad barons” (ANB). Grand Central Station and Vanderbilt University stand as testaments to his influence and wealth.

$9,500

David T. Valentine. New York and Washington: Brady Studio, c. late 1850s

This is a delightful Brady Imperial salt print portrait of one of the fascinating political and literary characters of mid-nineteenth-century New York, David T. Valentine.

$9,500

David T. Valentine. New York and Washington: Brady Studio, 1850s

David T. Valentine was clerk of the Common Council of New York (now City Council) and an avid collector of historical materials. His classic annual Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York (1841-1867), better known as Valentine’s Manual, has long been one of the most valuable resources for scholars and aficionados of New York history.

$8,550

Thubten Gyatso, 13th Dalai Lama. [Calcutta?], c. 1910

Thubten Gyatso, born in 1876, was recognized as the 13th incarnation of the Dalai Lama in 1878, and in 1895 he assumed ruling power. Over the next twenty years, he helped Tibet navigate perilous diplomatic and political seas, enduring periods of exile in 1904-1909 and 1910-1913. Tibet finally declared its independence under his leadership in 1913. He helped modernize Tibet and established the moral, political, and diplomatic authority of the Dalai Lama to an unprecedented degree.

This fine studio portrait may have been taken in Calcutta in 1910 when the Dalai Lama went there at the invitation of the British Viceroy, Lord Minto. The present Dalai Lama, the 14th, was identified after the death of death of Thubten Gyatso in 1933.

$8,500

Henry A. Wise. New York and Washington: Brady Studio, c. late 1850s

This is a dramatic full-length standing salt print portrait of Gov. Henry A. Wise by Mathew Brady.

$7,500

Illustrated manuscript and typescript memoir of her partner, “Mary Cary Packard R. N.” [and] Autograph manuscript autobiography, “Miss Sallie.”. Baltimore, 1937 and 1940

Mary Cary Packard (1858-1936) and Sarah F. Martin (b. 1864) met as nursing students at Massachusetts General Hospital, one of the first nurse training programs in America. Upon graduation the two moved to Baltimore where they were said to be the only two registered trained nurses in the state of Maryland. Packard and Martin were in charge of nursing at the Robert Garrett Hospital for Children for twenty-five years. They spent summers at the Garrett Sanatorium for Children in rural Mt. Airy. The two pioneered public health nursing in the state, and they played central leadership roles in organizing the nursing profession in Maryland.

$5,500

FDR Funeral 1945. [Published in LIFE], taken in 1945, printed later

Signed and inscribed by the photographer: “FDR Funeral 1945, Edward Clark, Life.” Famed Life photographer Edward Clark took this celebrated picture in 1945 at the funeral of Franklin D. Roosevelt in Atlanta.

$4,200