Nov 11, 2002 - Sale 1951

Sale 1951 - Lot 7

Price Realized: $ 1,610
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
MONTANA'S GIFT / GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY. Circa 1892.
28x9 3/4 inches. Rand, McNally & Co., Chicago.
Condition A-: horizontal folds; tears in margins. Paper.
Montana joined the Union and became a state in 1889. That same year, on September 18th, a conglomeration of earlier railroad companies were united as The Great Northern Railway Company. Immortalized by James Montgomery Flagg's 1917 poster , I Want You, the concept of an "Uncle Sam" has existed since the war of 1812. But it wasn't until the 1870s that political cartoonist Thomas Nast depicted the tall, stars-and-stripes clad paternal figure with whom the world has become familiar. This very early poster depiction of Uncle Sam is an extraordinary American broadside in which the Great Northern Railway was using a government land give-a-way to promote travel by train.