Feb 04, 2016 - Sale 2404

Sale 2404 - Lot 37

Price Realized: $ 1,375
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
(AMERICAN REVOLUTION--HISTORY.) Stark, Caleb. Manuscript for "Memoir and Official Correspondence of Gen. John Stark." 59 manuscript leaves (erratically paginated from 1-49 but apparently near complete for the early part of the text, plus pages 59-61 and 3 unnumbered leaves), with text occasionally extending to verso, most about 12 x 8 inches; stored in a roll for many years and still anxious to return to that state, pin holes along upper edge, minor wear and soiling to a few leaves. (MRS) Np, circa 1860
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John Stark (1728-1822) of Derryfield, NH served as a captain under Rogers in the French and Indian War, and as major general in the Continental Army. He was a hero of the Battle of Bennington, and coined the New Hampshire state motto "Live Free or Die." The most important early source on his life remains the short biography by his grandson Caleb Stark Jr. (1805-1864), which first appeared as an appendix to an 1831 edition of "Reminiscences of the French War; containing Rogers' Expeditions with the New-England Rangers," and was then revised in 1860 to serve as the introduction to "Memoir and Official Correspondence of Gen. John Stark." This is the partial first-draft manuscript of the 1860 revision. It includes most of the manuscript corresponding to the first 59 pages of the book, concluding during the long account of the Battle of Bennington; the published biography continued through page 95, followed by selections from Stark's correspondence and other matter. The manuscript (described on the verso of page 44 as "1st draft") differs in substantial ways from the published text. In the section describing the Battle of Bennington, for example, it appears that the publisher missed page 46 of the manuscript entirely, and changed a few words of page 47 to make sense of the text. A careful analysis of this manuscript may shed new light on one of New Hampshire's great heroes of the Revolution.
with--an 1831 letter to Caleb Stark from John Boyle of the Department of the Navy, thanking him for a copy of the 1831 book; and notes on the publication cost of the 1860 book on the letterhead of publisher G. Parker Lyon of Concord, NH.