Mar 21, 2024 - Sale 2663

Sale 2663 - Lot 194

Price Realized: $ 688
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
(ENTERTAINMENT--MUSIC.) Francis Johnson. The American Boy: A New Patriotic Song, from the American Sentinel. 3 pages including illustrated lithographic cover. Quarto, 13 x 9¾ inches, disbound; minor foxing, bottom line of imprint slightly cropped. Philadelphia: Osbourn's Music Saloon, circa 1835
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A composition by Francis "Frank" Johnson (1792-1844) of Philadelphia, one of the first successful African-American composers. In this piece, a young boy admires the flag and cannon salutes at a patriotic celebration, and his father urges "Welcome my boy, grow up & love / The land that gave you birth / And home where Freedom loves to dwell / Is paradise on earth." The song is dedicated to bandleader Colonel James Page of the State Fencibles; Johnson played bugle in Page's band in addition to leading his own. The suitably patriotic illustration was lithographed by Lehman & Duval of Philadelphia, a partnership active only from 1835 to 1836 per Peters in "America on Stone," page 263. Osbourn's Music Saloon appears in Philadelphia newspapers from 1835 to 1838.