Sep 30, 2021 - Sale 2580

Sale 2580 - Lot 135

Price Realized: $ 1,500
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
INCLUDING TWO LETTERS BY A BASEBALL LEGEND (FAMILY PAPERS.) Correspondence of Ohio physician Abraham Landis and his children. Approximately 140 items sleeved in 2 binders, including numerous stampless covers and a handful of original stamped envelopes; a few items worn or soiled, but condition generally strong (including the two Kenesaw Mountain Landis letters). Various places, 1845-1898 (bulk 1845-1855)
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Abraham Hoch Landis (1821-1896) was a physician in several southwestern Ohio towns: Germantown in Montgomery County (1845-September 1846), Trenton in Butler County (from October 1846), and Millville in Butler County (1848-1852); he later settled his family in Logansport, IN. At the heart of this collection are approximately 90 letters written to Dr. Landis from a wide variety of family and professional correspondents, 1845-1860.

Nephew Jacob B. King wrote on 19 November 1850 from the recently established Otterbein University; an 1878 graduation program is also included. Several friends write from nearby Miami University in Ohio describing campus life. R.T. Drake on 29 October 1846 describes a fire on campus at length, and on 17 December describes the ascension of "a balloon from the top of the college . . . manufactured from one of the students." He describes the selection of William Caldwell Anderson as president on 23 June 1849. Another Miami student, Joseph K. Zeller, on 13 June 1846 also makes apparently sarcastic comments about the Mexican War: "Haven't you volunteered yet? Where is your patriotism? Hurrah for the annexation of Mexico! Come all ye true patriots to the standard!!" Similarly, relative Noah Kumler reported from Dayton, OH on 21 June 1846 on a group of volunteers who were rejected: "They appear to be greatly disappointed in not having the privilege of marching to Mexico and reveling in the halls of Montezuma's."

On the political front, many letters discuss local politics. One is a 2-page printed circular letter from the Whig State Central Committee Room in Columbus, OH, 16 September 1846, hoping to bring out the vote for the coming state election (no examples in OCLC). Not many of the letters discuss the medical profession at length, but brother F.B. Landis wrote from Seven Mile, OH on 1 August 1849 to warn that three doctors in his town had died in a cholera outbreak. Another physician wrote on 17 November 1849 from Hamilton, OH: "I send you as requested a vaccinating scab. It is from the arm of a healthy child." We are pleased to affirm that the scab is no longer present with the letter. Also present are a 4-page essay on chemistry by Dr. Landis dated 2 July 1851, and a fragmentary prescription book giving names and formulas but no place or date.

This lot includes 35 later family letters plus some additional receipts dating from the 1870s through 1890s, addressed to several family members. Dr. Landis served as an assistant surgeon in the Civil War with the 35th Ohio Infantry, suffering wounds at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain. In 1866, he named his sixth child after the battle site. If you are a fan of baseball history, you may guess where this is going. . . . The son, Kenesaw Mountain Landis (1866-1944), became a judge, and later the long-serving first Commissioner of Baseball, presiding over the expulsion of the Black Sox scandal, the rise of the "Live Ball Era," night baseball, the All-Star Game, and (on the debit side) the last stand of the color line. Spotted among the family correspondence are two letters from young Kenesaw, whose identity is barely recognizable among the family inside jokes and nicknames. While baseball fans might think of him as stern and humorless, the letters are tinged with humor and slang, and provide an unusual insight into his personality long before his national fame--one as a 17-year-old railroad errand boy, and the other as a 32-year-old partner in an upstart law firm.

Kenesaw Mountain Landis. Autograph Letter Signed with his family nickname "Squire," to brother Charles Beary "Gussie" Landis, then a senior at Wabash College and later a Congressman. 2 pages, 10 x 8 inches, on one sheet of letterhead of the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati & St. Louis Railway Company, where Kenesaw was employed as an errand boy. Discusses the possibility of gathering the family together in Indianapolis: "You made some mention in regard to coming to Ind's to go into law. Merely mentioned that such a thing may possibly materialize. Now Guss, is there any chance of such a move on your part? If you should come we would get Hoff [brother John Howard Landis] down here too, and if three of us got here, I think we would get the old folks and the girls." Discussing his work: "All the RR boys are quaking in their boots. They have to answer 93 questions on the Westinghouse Air Brake. . . . I am learning telegraphy, study hard at it. Think I will twig it in 4 or 5 months." Indianapolis, IN, 14 March 1883.

Kenesaw Mountain Landis. Autograph Letter Signed with an indecipherable squiggle (perhaps his nickname Kennie), to family members "Mertz and Annie." 4 pages on 4 sheets of Uhl, Jones & Landis letterhead naming Kenesaw M. Landis as a partner, 10 3/4 x 8 1/4 inches. He discusses the work of his brother Charles Beary "Gus" Landis, then a United States Congressman for Indiana, who had insisted on the firing of a corrupt federal printing clerk named Alfred Baker no less than three times: "I see by the papers Gus has again been after the half[?] of Baker. I am unable to account for his persistence in hounding this worthless cuss. I can't see that the loafer is worth following up, and aside from that the spectacle is a sad contradiction of the usual and well-known inclination of our family to harmony." On his legal work: "My streak of luck in defending the street car damage suits has not yet been broken. Yesterday evening a jury in Judge Stough's court gave me a verdict in a case where a man (a fraud) was suing for $10,000 on account of 3 accidents. We were in trial 4 days. The man had three lawyers, just two too many." He adds a note about his family which helps establish the date, as his only daughter Susanne Landis Phillips was born on 4 January 1898: "The children are both fine. The little girl is developing beautifully. She weighs 16 pounds & is very bright. Several intelligent & experienced men & women say she resembles her father." Writing a week before the first American troops landed in Cuba, the war was on his mind: "I am a good deal concerned with the war. I have no doubt we will whip the Spaniard but I am somewhat horrid for fear I will always regret that I didn't go. I shall not do so, I promise you that, but I can't help but feel that a man would be better satisfied with himself if he didn't avoid such a responsibility. But I shall not go. I give you my word." Chicago, 3 June [1898].