Important Pair of Daguerreotypes: Black Caregiver with White Baby and the Child’s Parents. Talbot County, Maryland or Texas, c. 1853

This striking pair of daguerreotypes evokes the complex relationships between enslaved people and their enslavers in the American South, especially between white families and the trusted women who cared for their children.

the pair: $18,500

Flower Fables. George W. Briggs & Co., 1855

$18,000

Autograph note signed to Robert Watt with original albumen print photograph. No place, July 16, 1874

Mark Twain the humorist. Samuel Clemens sent this delightful humorous note with the accompanying half- length standing portrait of the debonair author.

$18,000

Some Account of the Pennsylvania Hospital; From its First Rise, to the Beginning of the Fifth Month, called May, 1754. Philadelphia: B. Franklin and D. Hall, 1754

FIRST EDITION of Benjamin Franklin’s account of the Pennsylvania Hospital, the first hospital established in the British colonies, co-founded by Franklin with his friend Dr. Thomas Bond. It remains a leading medical institution in Philadelphia.

$17,500

Splendid album containing 50 watercolors, 70 photographs, and fine calligraphic selections of poems and prose. Mostly Possingworth and environs, 1879 - ca. 1905

This magnificent, imposing album was made by a prominent late-Victorian hostess, patron of the arts, and gifted amateur artist. Helen Rose Huth was the wife of the banker Louis Huth. The Huths were major art collectors, and Helen sat for both George Frederic Watts and James Abbott McNeill Whistler who painted the celebrated “Arrangement in Black, No. 2: Portrait of Mrs Louis Huth.”

$16,000

A collection of all six portraits of the last surviving veterans of the American Revolution. Hartford: Moore, 1864

These is a complete collection of original carte de visite photographs of all six Revolutionary War veterans still surviving in 1864: William Hutchings (aged 100), Samuel Downing (aged 102), Daniel Waldo (aged 102), Adam Link (aged 102), Alexander Millener (aka Muroney) (aged 104), and Lemuel Cook (aged 105). A seventh man, James Barham, was believed to be alive but could not be located for the series.

$15,000

Liberty Tree: with the Last Words of Grandfather’s Chair. Boston: E. P. Peabody, 1841

$15,000

The Water Witch or The Skimmer of the Seas. Dresden: Walther, 1830

Rare true first edition of Cooper’s pirate romance. This nautical novel set in 17th-century New York was first published in a small edition in Dresden, where the author had settled in 1826. London and Philadelphia editions soon followed.

$15,000

The Celestial Rail-Road. Boston: James F. Fish, 1843

$15,000

Manuscript From The Life of Washington. No Place, ca. 1859

This is a long, revised autograph manuscript for Washington Irving’s The Life of George Washington. This section of the monumental biography presents the growing schism between Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Hamilton, as Washington was considering standing for re-election for a second term. The manuscript, which includes most of chapter 16 of the final volume, opens with Washington reading Jefferson’s letter accusing Hamilton and his followers of using the new Constitution “only as a step to an English Constitution.” It concludes with Washington’s attempts at reconciliation, hoping that “there may be mutual forbearance and temporizing yielding on all sides. Without these I do not see how the reins of government are to be managed, or how the Union of the States can be much longer preserved.”

$15,000