Heritage Auctions HISTORICAL PLATINUM Signature® Auction
July 8
View All Lots and Bid at HA.com/6275
INQUIRIES: 877-HERITAGE (437-4824)

DALLAS — There are relatively few items in Heritage Auctions’ July 8 Historical Platinum Session Signature auction — just shy of 100 offerings. Yet its breadth and depth include a handwritten Sigmund Freud manuscript, Sam Houston’s personal Map of Texas published in 1841 and, from a century later, 20-year-old Norma Jeane Dougherty’s first (legal) step toward becoming the movie star Marilyn Monroe.

This event spans the birth of the United States of America through the Space Race that pitted America against the Soviet Union. It includes some of the world’s most important documents, including a rare Declaration of Independence printed in Massachusetts only days after its signing in Philadelphia — and the letter in which Ringo Starr declares he has joined a band called the Beatles. Here, too, are the accidental gifts of history, including the Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s handwritten room receipt among a cache of archives from the Hotel Albert in Selma, Ala.

The auction encompasses politics, popular culture, the Wild West, the Civil Rights Movement and even Shakespeare and Harry Potter and the only 49-star presidential flag ever made for the Oval Office.

The sale will present the first broadside edition of the Declaration of Independence printed in Massachusetts. There are only six recorded copies of this historic broadside, and the one offered here is just one of two in private hands. The others reside at Harvard University, Georgetown University, the Massachusetts Historical Society and the Peabody Essex Museum.

Broadsides, meant to be posted and read, were used to quickly disseminate news of the day. While the Declaration was being distributed in regional newspapers, just 13 broadside editions of the Declaration of Independence were printed between July and August 1776. They originated in print shops scattered across six states: Pennsylvania, New York, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Massachusetts. John Rogers printed the copy offered in this event in Salem at the shop owned by Ezekiel Russell, from which The American Gazette was published in 1776.

This Declaration of Independence once belonged to Philip David Sang, who collected and studied Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century American manuscripts often loaned to or donated to universities, museums and libraries nationwide. Its rarity and origin certainly set this Declaration apart, and so, too, its layout: This is the only Declaration broadside printed in four columns.

An archive of more than 300 handwritten hotel room registration receipts from the Hotel Albert in Selma, Ala., from November 1964 through June 1966 — a period replete with turning points during the fight for civil rights — will be offered. As Dr King wrote in his autobiography, “Selma, Alabama, was to 1965 what Birmingham was to 1963. The right to vote was the issue, replacing public accommodation as the mass concern of a people hungry for a place in the sun and a voice in their destiny. In Selma, thousands of Negroes were courageously providing dramatic witness to the evil forces that bar our way to the all-important ballot box.”

This archive, preserved in a three-ring binder by a hotel employee, also contains room receipts from that day filled out by Lewis, Hosea Williams and their fellow Southern Christian Leadership Conference members Ralph D. Abernathy, Bernard Lee, Dorothy Cotton and Andrew J. Young; here, too, are those belonging to Rockwell, the office of segregationist George Wallace and other Nazis and Klan members there to disrupt the civil rights protests. The archive also brims with names of journalists there to document the struggle, including a young Ted Koppel and Gay Talese, as well as the federal agents in town to keep an eye on the violent doings in segregated Selma.

This auction also counts among its rarities numerous documents signed and written by President Abraham Lincoln, including an autograph album he signed during a New Year’s Day reception at the White House on January 1, 1863 — the day he also signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Here, as well, is a document tied to one of the most tragic days in American history: the earliest example of an assassination reward broadside — this first example announced a $30,000 reward for the capture of John Wilkes Booth for Lincoln’s assassination at Ford’s Theater in Washington DC, on April 14, 1865. Later broadsides, among them one in this very auction, would increase this reward to $50,000.

Another rarity serving as one of this auction’s centerpieces is the only 49-star Oval Office flag ever made, in this case for President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s second term. Eisenhower was the only president to serve under flags bearing three different numbers of stars: When he was elected in 1953, the country had 48 states; the 49-star flag became official in 1959 when Alaska became a state; and it was subsequently replaced by the 50-star design when Hawaii became a state just seven months later, making the 49-star design an absolute rarity.

Heritage Auctions is at 2801 West Airport Freeway, Northwest corner of West Airport Freeway and Valley View Lane. For information, 214-528-3500 or www.ha.com.

Francis Wahlgren | International Director of Rare Books and Manuscripts Ext. 3085 | FrancisW@HA.com
Joe Maddalena | Executive Vice President Ext. 1511 | JMaddalena@HA.com

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The extremely rare first broadside edition of the Declaration of Independence printed in Massachusetts – the very fine Philip D. Sang copy
[John Rodgers, circa July 14-16, 1776] One of only two copies in private hands