Jun 27, 2024 - Sale 2675

Sale 2675 - Lot 228

Price Realized: $ 1,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
(NEW YORK.) Leonidas Westervelt. Scrapbook of archaeological expeditions in and around New York. 81 scrapbook leaves, filled with photographs, manuscripts, clippings, pamphlets, and other material. Folio, 13 x 11 inches and 4 inches thick, original cloth-covered boards bound with string, paper title reading in manuscript "Scrapbook of Indian and Revolutionary sites and excavations"; moderate wear, many of the clippings worn or loose. In modern custom cloth folding case. Various places, 1921-34

Additional Details

Leonidas Westervelt (1875-1952) was a New York playwright and theater historian as well as an active amateur archaeologist. This personal scrapbook documents his archaeological digs in New York City, New Jersey, Connecticut, upstate New York, and Long Island, some of them done under the auspices of the New-York Historical Society or Heye's Museum of the American Indian. Included are photographs from a series of 1921 digs in West Point which revealed coins and tools (with typed reports); American Indian skeletons exhumed in Staten Island and the Bronx in 1927; an American Indian rock shelter in Haskell, NJ; and General Putnam's camp in Redding, CT. Also included are 3 Letters Signed by George Heye, and 11 manuscript letters from fellow adventurer W.L. Calver.