BOSTON – More than 1,100 lots are on offer in RR Auction‘s July 14 sale. With a section featuring America’s patriot leaders to honor Independence Day, this sale boasts a wealth of historical documents and manuscripts. View the fully illustrated catalog on LiveAuctioneers.

Highlights include a handwritten letter by Thomas Jefferson to war hero John Stark. The superlative one-page letter, signed “Th: Jefferson” and dated August 19, 1805 was written at Monticello to Stark, praising the “victories of Bennington, the first link in that chain of successes which issued in the surrender at Saratoga.” Remembered as the Hero of Bennington for his exemplary service at the Battle of Bennington on August 16, 1777, Stark led a group of New England militiamen in the defeat of a detachment of General John Burgoyne’s army. The victory was a major strategic success for the beleaguered patriot cause, galvanizing support for the independence movement. It is considered one of the early turning points in the American Revolution. After the War, Stark retired from public life to his farm in New Hampshire, where he lived out his days in relative obscurity—even Jefferson, the patriot philosopher then serving as America’s president, seemed surprised to learn that Stark was alive. The Jefferson letter carries an estimate of $60,000-plus.

Also featured is a George Washington letter penned a month before the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. The one-page letter, signed “Go: Washington” and dated March 10, 1775 is addressed from Mount Vernon to Edward Snickers. Before his death in 1790, Snickers had become a well-to-do gentleman in Frederick County with extensive landholdings and many talents, namely that of a horse trader, tavern keeper, wagoner, military supplier, plantation manager for others and planter for himself, and land speculator. Washington used Snickers’s horses and wagons to have supplies hauled between Alexandria and Winchester for the Virginia Regiment during the French and Indian War and for his own purposes thereafter. The Washington letter is estimated at $15,000-plus.

Another strong piece is a Benjamin Franklin-signed land grant issued by Franklin as president of Pennsylvania’s Supreme Executive Council. The vellum one-page manuscript signed “B. Franklin” and dated July 14, 1788 grants to John Lear a “certain Tract of Land called ‘Trevose’ situate on Laurel Run in Buffaloe Township. It is estimated at $8,000-plus.

Also represented is a vast selection of material from scarcer Declaration signers, including George Taylor, John Rutledge, John Hancock, Samuel Chase, and Lyman Hall. Other top lots include letters by Paul Gauguin and Henry David Thoreau, Albert Einstein autographs, and music memorabilia.

The Fine Autographs and Artifacts auction began on June 25 and will conclude on July 14.

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