?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 5,000 - $ 7,500
(HAWAII.) Papers of Charles Dana, who launched Hawaii's first bank in 1854--with a letter on a bedroom scandal in the royal family. 67 items in 4 folders, condition varies but generally strong. Various places, 1849-1874
Charles Dana (1824-1906) graduated from the University of Vermont and was a merchant in New York, St. Louis, San Francisco, and served as an officer of several companies including the North American Steamship Company. He was in Hawaii from 1854 to 1856, where as an agent of Page, Bacon & Co., he helped to establish the kingdom's first bank. His son Charles Anderson Dana became a noted philanthropist. This collection includes several noteworthy documents relating to Hawaii:
A 8-page manuscript draft of Page, Bacon & Co.'s original petition to the "Houses of Nobles and Representatives of the Hawaiian Islands" to establish the first bank: "To promote the interests and prosperity of said Kingdom and especially to advance its commercial interests (the great source of wealth to any people), a bank of issue, discount and deposit is greatly needed at Honolulu." The preamble is followed by 11 sections, some of them marked "expunged." Charles Dana is mentioned as a bank representative in Section 6. The draft is unsigned and undated, but likely dates to mid-1854; the bank was running ads in the Honolulu Polynesian by 14 October 1854.
A 2 July 1857 Honolulu letter from Dana's business partner Asher B. Bates reports on the Hawaiian scandal of the decade, when a young merchant named Marcus Monsarrat was caught in bed with Victoria Kamamalu, sister of Kamehameha IV. The letter reports: "Monserrat & Victoria were found together in her room by the King and Lot, & Lot presented a pistol to his breast & gave him the ultimatum: death or perpetual banishment. Monserrat said he deserved to die, but he preferred his life in another land & took a sudden departure. . . . Monserrat it seems has meddled with other people's potato vines before, but has always been able to hush it up. He is now charged publickly with having prostituted two wives of other white men in town--they were native women." He adds a complaint about "whore house dances at our hotels."
Two letters from Senator Solomon Foot of Vermont discuss efforts to appoint Dana as American Commissioner at Hawaii under the new Lincoln administration. On 3 December 1860, Foot asks whether Dana would want the job, as he had "passed several years there and maintained the most intimate relations with the members of that government and understand something of their language." On 31 March 1861, Foot expresses disgust that Dana was not awarded the position: "I have been chagrined, mortified, mad at our loss of the Hawaiian mission, & mostly for the reason that a poor drunken vagabond has the plum. . . . I saw Seward yesterday on the subject of assisting you to another plum, but he said no further consular appointments would be made for some time to come."
3 pages of incomplete notes from a lecture on Hawaii, apparently in Dana's hand. He describes his attendance at a traditional Hawaiian luau given by Prince Lot Kamehameha (later King Kamehameha V), with meats and vegetables wrapped in leaves and cooked in a pit with coals, "some native dances performed in the old fashion by very pretty girls" and music "produced by beating tom toms." In attendance was Captain Theodorus Bailey of the USS St. Mary's, placing the luau circa late 1854. His historical musings include a long denunciation of Captain Cook's impact on the island: "The people were not taught Christianity, but licentiousness & lust. . . . Women were enticed and decoyed on board his ships by scores & hundreds & there was planted the seed of that foul disease which has like a leprosy tainted the blood of these people and consigned their disfigured and disgusting corpses to untimely graves by thousands." He also gives a share of criticism to the Catholics: "With force and arms, ships of war, the braying of trumpets and roar of cannon was this repugnant religion forced upon an unwilling people." The notes are undated, but Dana made similar comments at a Missionary Society meeting in New York, as reported in the Pacific Commercial Advertiser of 14 July 1859.
In addition to the Hawaiian material, this lot contains:
23 business letters to and from Dana, 1854-1872, most relating to his role as Vice President of the North American Steamship Company. Notable are 9 letters from the company's president William Henry Webb (a notable shipping magnate and later the founder of the Webb Institute of Naval Architecture), 1867-1869. The letters discuss the planning of steamer routes, and some of the ships which Webb designed such as the USS Dunderberg.
21 family and personal letters, 1849-1860 and undated. Most notably, a 10 September 1860 letter from his brother in San Francisco states "The election of Lincoln is a foregone conclusion, tho it is best not to be too certain until the election is over." On 21 November 1860, his father A.G. Dana wrote a long denunciation of the secessionists, and added "I am more & more convinced of the wisdom of selecting Lincoln instead of Seward for our leader, and I am proud & gratified to believe that 7 votes were given for him by myself, my sons & son-in-law!"
A folder of 18 ephemera and documents, including a small broadside for a lecture by Dana on "Naples and its Surroundings" in Stockton, CA, 8 May [1851 or 1856?]; 6 family cartes-de-visite; a calling card reading "Secretary of State," Dana's circular letter to the bondholders of Des Moines Valley Railroad in 1874; and 7 checks and bonds from California banks, 1851-1864.
