Sep 30, 2021 - Sale 2580

Sale 2580 - Lot 144

Price Realized: $ 325
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 400 - $ 600
(IOWA.) "Wood for Sale!" broadside referencing an important Underground railroad stop in Civil Bend. Letterpress broadside, 8 x 11 1/2 inches; trimmed, folds, minimal foxing. No place, circa 1860
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This broadside references "Blanchard's School-House" in Civil Bend, Iowa as a nearby landmark. Ira Blanchard (1809-1872) was an abolitionist who settled in this ephemeral river-bottom village in 1849. He built a schoolhouse and encouraged some local Black children to attend. Hostile arsonists torched the school in 1850, but it was rebuilt in 1851. Blanchard's home, being on the banks of the Missouri River across from Nebraska, was a heavily frequented stop on the Underground Railroad. The famed John Brown brought a "cargo" of escapees there once in February 1859.

In this broadside, one Harrison Spurlock of Civil Bend advertises the availability of "137 Cords of Dry Elm Wood" available at "Lott Hammond's, one mile northwest of Blanchard's School-House." The author was likely William Henry Harrison Spurlock (1836-1911), and his associate was Lott Hammond (1815-1870); both lived in the Civil Bend area at the time of the 1860 census. Civil Bend, in Fremont County at Iowa's far southwestern corner, was never a large settlement and is now considered a ghost town.