?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000
(RHODE ISLAND.) Celebration of the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Founding of Brown University, extra-illustrated copy. [6], 178 pages interleaved with 62 printed, manuscript and photographic items. 4to, later 1/2 calf, minor wear; library markings including embossed stamps on title page and elsewhere. Providence: Sidney S. Rider, 1865 (with insertions dated 1743-1883)
This volume is lavishly extra-illustrated with 19 Autograph Letters Signed, 9 clipped signatures, 2 other manuscripts, 15 engravings (including views and portraits), 14 photographs, and 4 pieces of printed ephemera.
The most important insertion is the broadside program for the university's first commencement ceremony held on 7 September 1769, the only one at its original location in Warren, RI when it was still known as Rhode Island College. Titled "Benevolentissimo ac eximia virtute, doctrinaque utilissima prædito, viro, Stephano Hopkins," it lists the seven members of the college's first graduating class including future Continental Army general James Mitchell Varnum. It is trimmed and has short separations at its folds. Only 3 copies are traced in OCLC, and none at auction.
The most important manuscript insertion is a fragment of a letter signed twice each by Rhode Island's delegation to Continental Congress, Stephen Hopkins and Samuel Ward. Only the second leaf is present. It begins with a denunciation of an unknown Rhode Islander who has "the good of his country so little at heart as to not only decline entering into her service, but to violate her most sacred resolutions and endeavor to fix a stigma on the colony which gave him birth & hath always afforded him protection." This unnamed scoundrel would appear to be a supporter of the slave trade, as they add that "Mr. Ward's sentiments & conduct relative to the slave trade are so universally known that it is unnecessary to say anything on that head." They go on to discuss a Congressional resolution on the price of West India goods, and discuss defenses for the coming war campaign: "Our enemies will make their greatest possible efforts against us early in the spring. We have therefore no time to loose, but ought to improve every moment in making all possible preparations for the defence of the colonies in general, and for our own immediate defence in particular." They close with a postscript regarding their Congressional salaries. The letter has two full separations at the folds, and 6 other early paper repairs to the other folds. The famously shaky signature of Stephen Hopkins is desirable because he also signed the Declaration of Independence. The fragment is undated, but would seem to date from the first three months of 1776 (Ward died on 26 March 1776).
Another dramatic manuscript is a letter by Judge Daniel Jenckes (1701-1774) to his brother-in-law Cornelius Esten (1699-1776) regarding the death of Esten's son at sea near Pernambuco: "I heard of the sloop being to sword, and Cap. Easton dead, died soon after he came out. . . . Cap. Charles Holden of Warwick who sailed about the same time your son did for Serronam [Surinam?] fell to sword and a littel to windword of Berbishus . . . your son died a few days after he left Providence. . . . I greatly lament the death of my cousin who I thought would have made a likely man had he a lived to riper years." Providence, 20 March 1754.
Among the other manuscripts are letters by Judge David Howell, Senator Asher Robbins, the school's namesake Nicholas Brown Jr., Congressman Horace Binney, George William Curtis, Senator Henry Bowen Anthony, and two from Senator John Brown Francis.
Provenance: the compiler was apparently Horatio Gates Jones Jr. (1822-1893), a Philadelphia politician, who received an honorary degree from Brown in 1863; his father graduated from Brown in 1812. The volume was later the property of the Crozer Theological Seminary, and then deaccessioned.
