Sep 30, 2010 - Sale 2223

Sale 2223 - Lot 221

Price Realized: $ 1,020
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
(WISCONSIN.) Archive of William Walter Phelps records concerning land holdings in northern Michigan and Wisconsin. 8 manuscript volumes and approximately 1000 other manuscript items, 1.2 linear feet, various sizes and conditions, mostly somewhat water-damaged but with minimal loss of text. Vp, 1872-1906
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William Walter Phelps (1839-1894) was a New Jersey politician and railroad executive best known as a United States Congressman in the 1870s and 1880s. He also owned very extensive land in the west, as a major investor of the New York and Texas Land Company and on his own account. The bulk of this collection relates to holdings in dozens of counties in northern Michigan and Wisconsin managed on behalf of Phelps and his estate by Jacob S. Wetmore (1830-1913). 3 thick folio notebooks from the 1880s and 3 volumes of correspondence from 1901 to 1906 give exceptional detail into specific tracts, particularly efforts to sell or lease, to prosecute trespassers, or to sell timber-cutting rights, as well as reports on existing timber and topography.
The collection also includes three folders of corporate records of the New York and Texas Land Company from 1880 to 1904, mostly proxies, ballots, stockholder lists, and other related papers from annual meetings. According to the Online Handbook of Texas, most of this important company's records were destroyed in a bonfire before 1918. Rounding out the collection are cancelled checks from Phelps's account from 1872 to 1883, many of them signed by Congressman Phelps. A more detailed inventory is available upon request.