Apr 12, 2018 - Sale 2473

Sale 2473 - Lot 206

Price Realized: $ 2,375
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000
(TEXAS.) Theodore Gripon family papers, including his Confederate-era steamship partnership with William King. 79 items plus historical notes and clippings (0.7 linear feet) in one box plus one sleeve; various sizes and conditions, some worn with separations at folds. Vp, 1844-1937 and undated, bulk 1853-97
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Additional Details

Theodore Gripon (1822-1875), born in New York to French parents, settled in Mobile, AL by 1851, and then moved on to New Orleans in 1856. He plied the Mississippi River as a cotton trader aboard his steamboat Cora. In 1856 he bought the Cora II, and went into partnership with two Texans, including Richard King (1825-1885), who had already started building the legendary 825,000-acre King Ranch. Gripon served as captain of the Cora II, and moved to Sabine Pass, TX just before the outbreak of war.
Several documents in this lot relate to the Cora II, Gripon's partnership with King, and cotton-trading during the war years. Most notable is a large 20 1/2 x 15 1/2-inch certificate issued at Galveston by the Confederacy for the Cora II in 1863. Headed "Register of Vessels," it is illustrated with 3 inset engravings, and names King as a partner; it is toned, worn at the folds, and laid down on tissue. Also included is a letter from King to Gripon dated 7 October 1864, dunning Gripon for his share of the partnership's debts: "Your 1/3 is $818.52, and I would like to have you remit me that amount in specie before the boat leaves Matagorda. . . . I wish to close up all of her present business. . . . I have heard it related by Capt. Blakeman that you said I had treated you badly in regard to the Cora. Now, if that is the case, I am not aware of it, and if you feel aggrieved I am willing to make any arrangements with you in regard to the boat that we may agree upon." A deed for the 1856 purchase of the Cora and 5 certificates for cotton shipments dated 1863 are also included. After the war, Gripon filed a claim against the federal government for the loss of the Cora; an undated claim agreement is included.
The collection also includes a substantial collection of family papers from 1844 through 1937, mostly relating to Gripon's daughter Jessie (1866-1943) and her husband Louis John Kopke (1856-1939), a railroad engineer in Beaumont, TX. Kopke was most notable as one of the two members of Texas A&M University's first graduating class in 1880. The lot includes 7 letters of recommendation he received upon his graduation in August 1880, one of them from school president John Garland James. Also included are numerous letters between Jessie Kopke and her sisters Zada Gripon and Florence Adams, and other relatives extensive genealogical and historical notes on the Gripon and Kopke families cabinet photograph of Florence Gripon and a friend on horseback, 1896 14 other family photographs an account book dated 1858-67 6 spoons by New Orleans silversmith Hyde & Goodrich monogrammed "LG" which according to family tradition were made from Spanish doubloons found at Matagorda and 2 autograph albums, 1883-91.