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By Sandra
Palomino
Our October 19th Historical Manuscripts
Auction # 6182 includes a collection of letters, documents, and
artifacts that have been passed down through several generations
going back to the 1800s. Although this is not an uncommon
occurrence (we are very fortunate that families often entrust us
with their treasures), this particular consignment is accompanied
by a rich family history. In addition to telling me many family
stories, our consignor also shared a typescript prepared by
Scottie Fitzgerald Smith (his stepmother and daughter of F.
Scott Fitzgerald) of a taped oral history dictated by Emily
Hardesty, his step-grandmother and keeper of the family history.
The families had been estranged, and it was Scottie who located
Emily and worked with her to record the family's history. We are
including a link to the full transcript, and I encourage you to
take a moment to read it. It's a great story that knowingly weaves
known historical events with fanciful seasoning by the
narrator.
The founding patriarch was John Boyle, who immigrated to America as
an indentured servant in the early 1800s. He made his fortune
buying and reselling land bountied to veterans of the Revolutionary
War. He also served on several occasions as acting Secretary of the
Navy under Andrew Jackson. According to Emily, Boyle and Jackson
were of "kindred feeling".
Much of the material relates to Cornelius Boyle, John's son. The
Boyles settled in Washington D.C., and at the outbreak of the Civil
War, Cornelius (a well-respected doctor and wealthy landowner)
joined the Confederacy and served as Chief Provost-Marshal. From
the material included in the collection, we know senior commanders
of the Confederate Army held him in high regard; there are commendation letters from Robert E. Lee and
Pierre G.T. Beauregard.
Family stories say that he spied for the Confederacy, and a
publication produced by the CIA titled "Intelligence in the Civil
War" confirms that he was a Confederate intelligence officer. His
wealth and status in society gave Cornelius wide access to all
social circles, giving him an edge in determining the alliances of
those around him. His wealth and social status facilitated his
trips across the porous border between north and south.
Another family story is that Cornelius had owned valuable land in
Washington, D.C. and that he had paid his taxes on the land via
Edwin Stanton. After the war, Boyle discovered that he had lost his
land, and that he was barred from entering D.C. The additional blow
of being denied amnesty may have been what motivated him to
establish a colony with fellow Confederates in Mexico.
With a letter of introduction from Robert E.
Lee (which will be offered in our October auction), Cornelius
heads for Mexico City. Cornelius soon had all the requisite studies
and promotional materials to recruit other settlers. And this is
where things get interesting…
Cornelius sets off for Mexico (via Cuba), frequently writing home
to his wife and family as well as keeping a diary. His letters
describe a shipwreck off the coast of North Carolina, running into
Jubal Early in Havana, and hiring the "infamous bushwhacker"
William Quantrill as his body guard. Emily's typescript relates
this last part, she is not kind in describing Quantrill: "He was a
horrible character in the mid-west who raided both sides equally.
I'm sure he headed for Mexico because if either side caught him he
would have been hung." Emily concludes, "I suppose he was a good
bodyguard."
Although it is accepted that Quantrill was captured and killed by
Union forces, there are several accounts that tell of a man living
in Vancouver Island under the name of John Sharp claiming to be
William Quantrill. Sharp claimed that he had escaped to Chile, and
had later made his way to Texas and Oregon, finally settling in
British Columbia in the 1890s. There were newspaper stories
published about Sharp in 1907; but Sharp was savagely beaten and
killed soon after the stories were published; his claims were never
confirmed.
I have no way of proving that the man Boyle writes about was indeed
the notorious Quantrill, but I can't dismiss it as fanciful
storytelling either. Boyle's rank as Provost-Marshal and experience
as a spy during the war suggests he would know who Quantrill was;
also, why would he bother writing to his wife about it?
Additionally, it seems more than coincidental that Boyle leaves
Quantrill in Mexico, and that a man later claiming to be Quantrill
says that he escaped to Chile.
There are other parts of Emily's narrative that are more flavor
than fact. The collection includes a beautiful 19th
Century cameo of Cornelius that is said to have been made by
Augustus St. Gaudens. This is unlikely because St. Gaudens made
cameos for only a short time during the years of the Civil War
while doing an apprenticeship in New York. Emily also describes
wooden inlaid boxes (they will be offered in a future Americana
auction), that were said to have run the blockade. There is no way
of knowing if this is true; although we can determine that they are
right for the period, and are of European origin.
These next few weeks will be hectic as we finish our cataloguing
for the October auction. I encourage you to check back frequently
as Boyle Family lots
are added. Feel free to contact me for additional images of any
items that may be of interest, and of course, I welcome your
comments and ideas about the Boyle material and Emily's
narrative.
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Space Exploration
Auction Update |
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By Michael Riley
The November 10th Space Exploration Auction
#6179 is shaping up nicely with several great consignments
recently received. We are processing, describing, and photographing
the lots as quickly as we can and you can follow our progress by
clicking on the above link to view the auction previews. If you see
something of interest, be sure to click the " Track this Lot "
button. This gives you one location to find everything you're
interested in, allowing you to check back as photos and additional
information is added, and even giving you a simple way to place
batch bids later when the auction opens.
Let me share just a few of my "Tracked Lots" with you- items that I
feel are particularly interesting and important.
Apollo Spacesuit Program: Rare and Early SPD-143-3
"Suit Coverall" by ILC. An important early step in the
development of the A7L spacesuit.
Apollo 17 Flown Flag on Presentation
Certificate. We don't see a lot of flown flags from this
mission and when we do, they are often plagued with glue
bleedthrough. This example is clean and from a NASA V.I.P.
Vostok 2 Flown Food Tubes from Gherman Titov's
Collection. He was the second Soviet cosmonaut to fly and the
first man to spend an entire day in space. These are food tubes
(well, actually juice tubes) that he consumed that day. Both are
signed.
Alexei Leonov's Owned and Worn Soviet Air Force
Major General's Uniform. An important figure in Space history,
the first man to perform an EVA. This was his last official uniform
before retiring and is complete and perfect for display.
By the time you read this, we will likely have the first group of
lots up in preview from what we feel is one of the largest
collections of Apollo 11 Memorabilia ever assembled. There are
hundreds of items in this Ron Ulrich Collection including:
interesting and unique signed pieces, historic newspapers, world
coins, medals, paperweights, textiles, books, glasses, mugs,
statues, plaques, plates, knives, pinbacks, tankards, and
philatelic material. If your Apollo 11 display needs "dressing up"
a bit, standby for this offering.
We still have about four weeks remaining before the Consignment
Deadline of September 19th. We are always seeking
quality material especially from the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo
programs. If you have Space items that you may wish to consign,
please send a detailed list with clearimages (a necessity for
autographs) to my attention at MichaelR@HA.com. We
are particularly interested in flown items from these missions.
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Awesome NASA
Voyager-Related Archives from Jon Lomberg. |
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By Michael Riley
Yes, I know these lots are in the Rare Books Auction
#6201 coming up on September 14th, but I want to
make certain that our Space collectors know about them. Jon Lomberg
is a premier space artist and science journalist who, for a
quarter-century, was Carl Sagan's principal artistic collaborator.
If that's not enough, the International Astronomical Union named an
asteroid after him. How cool is that? There are two great lots
coming up in this auction that will be open for bidding in just a
few days.
Design and Production Archive for the
Golden Record Attached to Both NASA Voyager
Spacecraft. For those of you who were following the
launch of the Voyager spacecraft in 1977, you know that
each had a time capsule of sorts attached in the form of a Golden
Record containing images and sounds intended to reveal Earth's life
and culture for any extraterrestrialbeings that might encounter it.
(Does anyone remember the 1979 film, Star Trek: The Motion
Picture?) Lomberg was NASA's Design Director for the Golden
Record and this lot contains his personal archive of material
relating to the project. Please click on the above link (or the
image) and read through the description of what's included.
Absolutely fascinating,
Archive of Materials and Memorabilia from
the Voyager Missions and Encounters. Included in this
massive historical archive are six binders with approximately 400 8
x 10 inch NASA Voyager mission press photographs that were given
out by hand only to accredited Voyager Press. Jon Lomberg was an
accredited reporter for the CBC and attended every Voyager
encounter and has a complete set of these photographs. Several
hundred photographs in several binders of four planets and 30
moons. Also, a unique historical record of the Voyager Mission
available nowhere else: a COSMOS 1981 calendar signed by Carl Sagan
and Jon Lomberg; a factory sealed VISIONS OF MARS CD-ROM, Sagan and
Lomberg's next interplanetary message disk (now on Mars!)
unreleased and VERY RARE; Original Jon Lomberg Press Badges and JPL
staff lab badges; Original buttons and cloth patch from Voyager
Encounters, Invitation from NASA Administrator to attend Voyage
Encounter. Assorted Press materials: info packets from JPL, prints
of Voyager images and spacecraft, etc.; Original Jon Lomberg
notebooks from Voyager Encounters with handwritten notes, drawings,
doodles, and a painted color palette for the Jovian moons (done by
Don Davis); tape logs of interviews and press briefings, and a
collection of original black and white film camera snapshots taken
at JPL showing Lomberg, the Voyager press room, Ray Bradbury,
Robert Heinlein, computer graphics legend Jim Blinn, and authorMark
Washburn. Also included is a bound and signed unpublished
manuscript Speaking for Earth by Jon Lomberg, describing
his work with Carl Sagan on the Voyager Record and other
projects.
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The Greatest American
Political Memorabilia Collection Ever Assembled |
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The landmark political memorabilia collection of David and Janice
Frent - widely regarded as the largest and most comprehensive
collection of itskind ever assembled - will debut October 21 at
Heritage Auctions with Auction #6181, the first
of at least eight auctions dedicated to the collection. The items
included span everything from buttons to banners, from George
Washington up through recent elections. The collection has never
been displayed publicly, but a number of items can be seen
illustrating the important two-volume reference work Running
for President, The Candidates and Their Images, edited by
eminent historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. and published by Simon
& Schuster in 1994.
"Presenting this monumental collection at auction will be quite a
challenge," Tom Slater said. "I have presided over the auction sale
of some of the greatest political collections, including those of
U.I. ‘Chick' Harris and Merrill Berman. But the Frent Collection
dwarfs even those legendary holdings. We anticipate a minimum of
eight quarterly catalog auctions of 500–600 lots each, and those
will include just the more important pieces in the collection. The
Harris and Berman collections each realized over $2 million dollars
at auction, and the Frent Collection will unquestionably achieve
multiples of that amount."
The collection was begun by the Frents when they were newlyweds
nearly a half century ago, when they happened on a Mason jar
containing some colorful turn-of-the-century political buttons
including "Rough Rider" Theodore Roosevelt. Both already had an
affinity for American history, and these tangible artifacts
immediately caught their fancy. Little did they know that the
chance discovery would ultimately result in a collection which
would occupy eight rooms in the Frents' spacious suburban home.
"It's hard to imagine living without the collection," Janice said,
"but over time the burden of being its custodians has grown harder
to bear; it's a great responsibility. Now we find ourselves looking
forward to sharing these much-loved treasures with a new generation
of collectors." The collection is now securely ensconced at our
Dallas headquarters, where it will be inventoried and cataloged for
auction.
While the profusion of rare and unusual objects is astonishing, the
uniformly high condition standards maintained by the collectors is
also remarkable.
"Over the years, prices of rare political items have risen to the
point where many purchases amount to investment decisions," Slater
said. "When that occurs in a collecting field, condition becomes
more and more important. Clearly this was a priority from day one
for the Frents. That practice should pay real dividends for the
sellers as we auction the collection. Many of the pieces are the
finest we have ever seen, and that will not go unnoticed by
bidders."
"We always tried to obtain the finest condition available," David
said, "and if we had the opportunity to upgrade, we always took it.
We weren't thinking in investment terms in those days. We just
wanted the most appealing examples we could find."
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Single-Owner Collection of Rare Burgundy Leads Heritage
Auctions' Fall Season
More than 500 lots of the finest and rarest Burgundy are posed to
hammer for $2 million or more when Heritage Auctions launches its
fall season with its Fine & Rare Wine Auction
Sept. 8 in Beverly Hills, simulcast to Hong Kong at the exclusive
Crown Wine Cellars. The Romulus Collection: Compelling Burgundy
from a California Gentleman boasts impeccable provenance in
addition to the incredible roll call of producers, with every lot
purchased on release from local retailers and stored in pristine
professional storage.
Included in the highlights are 57 lots from Domaine de la Romanee
Conti, 63 lots from Domaine Leroy, 11 different producers of
Richebourg, nine different producers of Montrachet and 12 different
producers of Bonnes Mares. Altogether there are 3,000 bottles of
Grand Cru Burgundy hitting the block representing every vineyard
except Clos de Lambrays.
"Over the last 20 years, I have helped curate countless
collections, selling wines to make space for new regions, new
producers, or new vintages," Heritage Auctions Fine & Rare Wine
Director Frank Martell said. "This is, by far, one of the best
collections I have ever seen and one of the proudest I am to bring
to market. Collectors should make room for cases from The
Romulus Collection, as they won't get another chance to
purchase pristine Burgundy like this for a long time."
More information about Wine auctions.
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