Mar 18, 2010 - Sale 2207

Sale 2207 - Lot 156

Price Realized: $ 960
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 400 - $ 600
(MAINE.) Bradley, John. Archive of general store daybooks, documenting Daniel Webster as a young schoolmaster. 5 volumes, various sizes and conditions, with the earliest volume lacking the rear cover. Fryeburg, ME, 1801-1835
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Additional Details

Fryeburg, Maine is a small inland town on the New Hampshire border. One of its claims to fame is that Daniel Webster spent a year there as a young man. In 1802, at the age of 19, he was appointed as headmaster of the Fryeburg Academy. According to Tefft's 1854 Life of Daniel Webster, these months "must be accounted as among the most interesting and important of his life," adding that "the circumstances that directed his course to Fryeburg arose from an early intimacy with the family of the Hon. John Bradley."
John Bradley Jr. (b.1779) was a merchant in Fryeburg. The earliest volume in this collection is a daybook kept by the partnership of R. & J. Bradley from June 1801 to March 1802. Daniel Webster first appears on 3 January, buying a cake of soap, and appears at least 12 more times, purchasing ribbon, quills, a pencil, a gold ring, a skein of silk, a "pocket full of raisins," and more. The other volumes include three other daybooks of John Bradley and the firm of Bradley & Warren, 1818-34; and a small volume listing "Articles sold at auction by Bradley & Warren," 1835.