This extraordinary document is a working draft of a parliamentary speech articulating Great Britain’s global strategy for prosecuting the Seven Years’ War. The writer argues for massive financial support for Frederick II of Prussia, that he might occupy French attention, manpower and treasure on the Continent. This would enable the British to exploit their advantages in […]
$7,500
View DetailsA landmark map compiled by French diplomat and spy Eugène Duflot de Mofras during the contest for control of the American West, complete with exciting period annotations by French prospectors. In the early 1840s the American West Coast was very much up for grabs: Mexico had already lost Texas, and its administration of California was shambolic; […]
$15,000
View DetailsA small archive of material related to the 1842 donation to the Library of Congress of two interesting French and Indian War-era maps of North America. In 1842 Doctor Andrew Nichols (1785-1853), a distinguished citizen of Danvers, Massachusetts, enquired of his Congressman, Leverett Saltonstall (1783-1845), whether the Library of Congress would welcome a gift from […]
$950
View DetailsA recently-discovered watercolor of New York City, contemporary with the Stamp Act Riots and one of only a handful of manuscript views of the city from before the Revolution. Artist Pieter Idsertsz depicts New York as seen from the southwest, from a vantage point across the East River in Brooklyn, possibly at Red Hook. The city […]
$22,500
View DetailsA massive return for all ordnance stores belonging to the Continental Army on hand at Boston at the opening of 1777. Though similar returns for smaller units appear with some frequency on the antiquarian market, it is rare indeed to encounter one for such a major component of the Continental Army, and with such excellent […]
$15,000
View DetailsTwo early copies of an 1821 survey recording the division of common lands at the North Pasture a couple of miles east of the town of Nantucket, a process as controversial as it was important. While Nantucket institutions hold substantial cartographic archives related to land ownership on the island, such material is almost never encountered […]
$1,750
View DetailsA large, finely-rendered manuscript plan of the siege of a European-style fortress, drawn in 1832 at the United States Military Academy at West Point. The plan shows the methodical investment and capture of the fortress over the course of a month, using color coding to indicate day-by-day progress of the siege works. The basic siege […]
$1,500
View DetailsA finely-rendered geological map of the Marathon Basin in Brewster County, Texas, from the early years of West Texas oil exploration. Oil exploration in West Texas was at a feverish pitch during the years 1919-21, particularly in the Permian Basin and the adjoining Marathon Basin. Exploratory drilling in both areas began in 1920, but with […]
$1,250
View DetailsAn early manuscript map of what is now New York City, based closely on William Bradford’s New Map of the Harbour of New York, one of the great rarities of 18th-century American cartography. Like the Bradford map, our manuscript depicts New York and northeastern New Jersey from roughly present-day Marlboro Township in the southwest, to Little Falls in […]
$29,500
View DetailsA unique archive of manuscript and printed maps and plans tracing efforts over more than half a century to develop the Surfside area on Nantucket’s south shore. The material documents changing conceptions of the area, from a planned community of large lots and generous parkland, very much in the mode of contemporary resort communities such as […]
$12,500
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