Sale 2455 - Printed & Manuscript Americana, September 28, 2017

155 WITHTHREE RELATED LETTERS 155 c   (MASSACHUSETTS.) Hough, Franklin B.; compiler. Papers Relating to the Island of Nantucket. Hand-tinted folding map. xviii, 162, [1] pages. 4to, contemporary full morocco gilt byVan Antwerp of Albany, light scuffing on front board, otherwise minimal wear; printed in red and black, all edges gilt, one of 150 copies. Albany, NY: [Joel Munsell], 1856 [1,000/1,500] A finely printed compilation of 17th-century Nantucket records found in the NewYork state archives. Among this book’s other charms, it is believed to be the first 19th-century American book printed in Caslon type, which later became quite popular for finely printed antiquarian works of this sort. Printer Joel Munsell later recalled:“The founts being rather small, the progress of the work was necessarily slow, the more so as I undertook to filch time from my business to set the types myself, and did compose the whole work with my own fingers. I could not then find suitable paper, nor get a paper-maker to under- stand what I wanted by a cream-white of the right shade. One of them, who seemed to catch a glimpse of the art, exclaimed,‘Oh!Yes, I see, you want some dirt in it!’ It was hard printing upon the porcelain surfaces of the paper which composes the first volumes, although we know how to do it much better now”—Historical Magazine, August 1866 supplement, page 44. See also Edelstein, Joel Munsell: Printer and Antiquarian, page 277. with —three letters from the author’s correspondence files, suggest- ing that this is his personal copy: two letters fromAlexander Starbuck ofWaltham,MA to Hough dated 9 and 18 July 1872, concerning the book’s references to early Nantucket whalers and the possibility of purchasing the original manuscripts; and Hough’s draft response dated Lowville, NY, 22 July 1872. 154 c   (MARYLAND.) Ledger of shipping merchant Robert Peacock of Oxford, Maryland. [2], 67, [31] manuscript leaves. 8vo, contemporary limp calf, minor wear; contents generally clean. Vp, 1766-1778 [800/1,200] Peacock invested in shares of numerous merchant voyages, trading with Gibraltar,Holland and Italy, and seemed to lean toward luxury goods: wine, silk stockings, parmesan cheese. On at least one occasion, he seems to have traded in human cargo. In a joint account from 1777 he notes “a servant sold at Baltimore in 1775 June which was charged to me.”Among the interesting accounts are with Captain William McGachin (a friend of Washington’s) on page 2; and prominent Baltimore physician John Stevenson on page 14. He signs his own name on page 19, and is mentioned in several other spots. In the rear are 29 pages of notes from an early reading of Marshall’s Life ofWashington.