Earning the sale’s highest price of $187,500 was Thomas Jefferson’s address to the Cherokee Nation, made using his polygraph machine.
Review by Madelia Hickman Ring
DALLAS — Two sessions — a live one and an online-only one — on Friday, March 28 resulted in 364 lots of historical manuscripts, many with Texas interest, to cross the block at Heritage Auctions. With 325 lots gaveling down successfully, the sale achieved a total of $1,517,035.
A significant portion of that sale total — $187,500 — went to the sale’s highest-selling lot, a polygraph copy of Thomas Jefferson’s address to the Cherokee Nation that was signed and dated January 10, 1806, — three days after the Treaty of Washington ceded all rights to the land between the Tennessee and Duck Rivers. Titled “My Friends & Children Chiefs of the Cherokee Nation,” the 3½-page bifolium manuscript was, the auction catalog noted, “part of his broader policy of Native American assimilation and land acquisition. His message encouraged the Cherokees to adopt European American agricultural practices and settle into a sedentary lifestyle, which he argued would lead to prosperity and stability.” It came to sale from the descendants of manuscripts collector Jacob J. Podell; the original manuscript was noted to be in the collection of the Library of Congress.
A letter written by Jefferson to Dutch-born writer and scholar Francis Adrian Vander Kemp and dated January 19, 1823, realized $50,000. The letter was remarkable because he discussed his diminishing faculties, noting, “this disability imposed on me by nature…may have been a providential favor to prevent my betraying on paper that wane of the mind which is the necessary effect of the decline of body.”
A bold signature and fine condition certified and encapsulation by PSA were among the desirable features of this January 8, 1864, carte de visite of Abraham Lincoln by Matthew Brady. Bidders took it to $87,500.
Items connected with Abraham Lincoln are usually hotly contested by collectors and the second- and third-highest prices of the day fit that bill. First, achieving $87,500, was a carte de visite of Lincoln taken by photographer Matthew Brady with a bold example of Lincoln’s signature along the bottom of the album. The house identified that it had been taken on January 8, 1864, in one of at least three sittings that year.
Lincoln’s assassination on April 15, 1865, was an event that captured the attention of not only the US but the world as well. The third-highest price was for an archive of letters, cartes de visite, diaries, documents and artifacts assembled by Christian Rath, the provost marshal who oversaw the incarceration, trial and execution of the Lincoln conspirators. In addition to manuscripts relating to Rath’s service during the Civil War, the lot included a section of rope from the gallows and a pair of handcuffs used in the execution. Though provenance for the lot was not identified, the archive sold for $62,500.
Four lots in the sale were signed by Albert Einstein: three letters and one photograph. Offered consecutively, the letters realized $45,000, $55,000 and $27,500, while the photograph, offered last, brought $18,750.
The highest-selling Texas-related lot was the final paycheck — a Treasury warrant dated March 22, 1861 — that Sam Houston received as Governor of Texas. It bore his endorsing signature and was in the amount of $458.34, but in Heritage’s sale, it soared to $40,000.
Heritage will conduct its next Americana & Political Signature auction on April 25 and a showcase sale in the category on July 12; the firm’s next Historic Texana auction has not yet been scheduled.
Prices quoted include the buyer’s premium as reported by the auction house. For information, www.ha.com or 214-528-3500.
