?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
Smith, Julia Evelina (1792-1886) Abby Smith and Her Cows. With a Report of the Law Case Decided Contrary to Law.
Hartford, CT: American Publishing Co., 1877.
First edition, octavo, printed in two columns and illustrated with a frontispiece depicting Miss Abby Smith with four of the cows, named Daisy, Whitey, Minnie, and Proxy, and two calves, named Martha Washington and Abigail Adams; bound in original limp printed paper wrappers, stab sewn (light offsetting to text; front wrapper partially detached with minor chips and losses to spine, light foxing and tiny stains); 8 5/8 x 5 ¾ in.
"Julia Smith and her sister Abby Hadassah Smith (1797-1878) were the only surviving members of their family. Angered by artificially elevated tax rates on their valuable farmstead, they began to attend women's suffrage meetings in Hartford. At a Glastonbury town meeting in 1873, Abby Smith delivered a spirited protest against the taxation of unenfranchised women, after which the sisters refused to pay taxes until they were granted the right to vote in town meetings. The following January, local authorities seized seven of their valued Alderney cows, which were sold to cover the unpaid taxes. In addition, in June 1874, officials auctioned off fifteen acres of the Smith's pastureland, valued at $2,000, because the sisters owed approximately $50 in property taxes. Legal irregularities in this sale led to a protracted lawsuit in which the Smiths succeeded in getting their land back. Meanwhile, their cows were taken away repeatedly for tax payments. Although the publication of the sisters' speeches and letters in newspapers across the nation brought notoriety to the case and the return of the cows, it did not win the women the right to vote." (Bridwell Library, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX).
