?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
(KENTUCKY.) Thruston-Pope family scrapbook, including an account of the first attempted presidential assassination. Numerous original documents and transcripts (some numbering many pages) and a few clippings mounted on 39 scrapbook leaves. Folio, contemporary cloth, rebacked, worn; some contents quite worn, or with crude early repairs. Vp, 1834-98
This scrapbook was compiled by John Thruston (1826-1901) of Louisville, KY and his son Charles Mynn Thruston (1868-1942), and is filled with research on his Thruston and Pope ancestors in Virginia and Kentucky, particularly ancestor Charles Mynn Thruston (1738-1812), a colonel in the Revolution. Many of the transcribed documents date back to the 17th century; some relate to the family's slave holdings. The earliest dated original documents in this volume are a pair of letters written by John Thruston's father-in-law Patrick Henry Pope during his term representing Kentucky in the United States House of Representatives, 1834 and 1835. The 30 January 1835 letter describes the first assassination attempt on a United States president, which occurred as Andrew Jackson was leaving Congress: "A ruffian (a mechanic of this city) drew a pistol, presented it almost against the breast of the president, pulled trigger, but the percussion cap popped. He was immediately seized, but he instantly pulled another pistol, presented it in like manner. When the cap again exploded without firing, the president, in great indignation, struck at the mechanic, but without striking him. The president urged his friends to permit him assail the wretch, stating that if they would, he could obviate the necessity of the fellow being tried by a judge. . . . If there had been no interference, the president would have killed the poltroon with his walking stick." Also included is a leaf from Ellen Pope's autograph album dated 1854 with inscriptions by Millard Fillmore and John P. Kennedy.
