?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
(WAR OF 1812.) Pennsylvania "Town Meeting" broadside to raise troops in response to the British burning of Washington. Letterpress broadside, 12 1/4 x 7 1/4, signed in type by John Hubley as chairman and Samuel White as secretary; laid down on the inside lid of a period box, quite worn, with a full vertical split, considerable wear at edges, heavy toning, minor dampstaining, but text largely complete except along the split. The box 7 x 13 x 8 inches, leather tacked down over wood, quite worn, lid detached. Lancaster, PA, 29 August 1814
The minutes of a "very large and respectable" meeting held by "the Citizens of the Borough of Lancaster" at the town courthouse just 5 days after the British burned Washington. It notes that "the Capital of the U.S. has recently been destroyed by a haughty and powerful Enemy, who threatens the conflagration of the Metropolis of a sister State," and resolves that able-bodied citizens should "form themselves into Volunteer Companies, as expeditiously as possible, to march at a moment's warning" and that "the spirited young Men of this place, and all others who rushed, without orders, to the assistance of their Fellow-citizens at Baltimore, deserve the thanks of this Meeting and the gratitude of their Country." 1000 copies of this urgent broadside were ordered to be distributed throughout the county, but this may be the only one which has survived. The text of this resolution was published in Riddle's 1917 book The Story of Lancaster: Old and New, page 112, but we find no record of this broadside at auction or in OCLC. A powerful artifact from a perilous moment in history.
