Sep 30, 2010 - Sale 2223

Sale 2223 - Lot 151

Price Realized: $ 960
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
(NEW YORK.) [Mulford, Samuel.] Observations upon a Letter from Brigadier Hunter, Governour of New York, to the Commons for Trade. Apparently an Autograph Manuscript retained copy, docketed "Dr of a Reply of Mr. Mulfords to Mr. Hunter's Answer." 7 pages, 12 x 7 1/2 inches, on two sheets, stitched; worn and toned, with no loss of text. [New York], 20 January 1717/8
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Samuel Mulford (1645?-1725) was a whaler and a member of the New York General Assembly from East Hampton, Long Island. In 1711, Governor Robert Hunter instituted a whale-oil tax, which Mulford made his life's work to overturn. In 1716 he took his case directly to King George, wearing fish-hooks in his pockets to deter London's rampant pickpockets. The following year, Hunter wrote to England dismissing Mulford as a "crazed man."
This is Mulford's draft response, in which he warns that the governor's "oppressions and unjust measures . . . may bring thousands . . . to be as crazed as I am." He then provides a short history of whaling on Long Island, dating back to the period under Connecticut rule in the 1670s: "For the space of fifty years, it was the custom and practice of the subjects to go out upon the seas ajasent to their lands in small boats, to take and kill whals." He recalls how he was prosecuted by Hunter "for such whals killed by the Indians in my employ, thay haveing one halfe what was so gott," and described his lengthy confrontation with Hunter in detail. A great early whaling document, and an important bit of Long Island history.