DAVENPORT, WA — The special collections library of an Alabama college, featuring early works on the history of North America and classics of science and literature, was sold at Grant Zahajko Auctions during two days on July 31 and August 1. Founded in 1856, Birmingham-Southern College (BSC) operated for 168 years as a private arts college affiliated to the United Methodist Church in Alabama. However, it closed at the end of the 2023-2024 school year after years of financial trouble.
As these books had been shelved in a locked room, the majority had few traditional markings of library ownership, although some had BSC bookplates and occasionally spine damage following the removal of stickers or labels. Session One on July 31 numbered 502 lots, with Session Two on August 1 offering a further 483 lots.
One of many early histories and travelogs of the Southern states of Colonial and Federal America on offer was The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles: with the names of the Adventurers, Planters, and Governours from their first beginning.
Written by the English soldier, explorer, and colonial governor Captain John Smith (1580-1631) and first published in 1624, the book is one of the earliest histories of the territory as administered by the Virginia Company of London. This copy, which references Charles I as a prince (dating it to before his succession in March 1625), includes the four maps of Virginia, Ould Virginia, Summer Isles, and New England, although they were thought to be later facsimiles. It had expectations of $8,000-$12,000 and took $17,000 ($21,420 with buyer’s premium), the highest price of the two days.
Federal period maps of the southern territories provided the sale with its surprises. A Map of Louisiana and Mexico, estimated at $200-$400 but hammered for $11,000 ($13,860 with buyer’s premium), was identified by bidders as a rarity from the time of the Adams Onis Treaty. Published in Paris by Pierre Antoine Tardieu, it was printed in 1820, the year after the signing of the treaty that established the boundary between the US and what was then known as New Spain. Tardieu’s map was considered vastly superior to others of the time.
Known in three different states, it incorporates the published works of a range of map-makers and explorers including Lewis and Clark, Alexander von Humboldt, and the Spanish-American cartographer and astronomer José Joaquín Ferrer y Cafranga (1763-1818). It is thought that Tardieu was assisted in his endeavors by his occasional correspondent Thomas Jefferson. This copy, dissected and linen-backed, came in its original marbled cardboard sleeve with the label of W. Faden, Geographer to His Majesty.
The collection also included both Sannoner-Peel maps surveying the northern and southern districts of what was then called the Alabama Territory. Although undated, these were published in Philadelphia by Tanner, Vallance Kearny & Co. in 1817 to 1818, following surveys by Ferdinand Sannoner, James Weakley, and Hunter Peel. The men were hired by merchant, land speculator, and militiaman John Coffee (1772-1833) who, after receiving land in the north of Alabama as a War of 1812 veteran, was appointed by President Monroe as surveyor general of the public lands in the northern Mississippi Territory.
In ‘good to very good condition’ was an 1817 Map of the Late Surveys in the Northern District of the Alabama Territory, which hammered for $7,500 ($9,450 with buyer’s premium) against a $200-$400 estimate, while the 1818 Map of the Late Surveys in the Southern District of the Alabama Territory, with some paper loss to the right border, took $5,500 ($6,930 with buyer’s premium) against the same estimate.
A reasonable copy of Thomas McKenney’s The History of the Indian Tribes of North America — the celebrated collection of Native American biographies and lithograph portraits published in Philadelphia from 1837 to 1844 — realized $15,000, or $18,900 with buyer’s premium. The three-volume set was missing five of the 120 hand-colored lithographic plates, with most pages showing light foxing and watermark damage.
McKenney (1785-1859), who held the title of Superintendent of Indian Affairs from 1824 to 1830, commissioned the artist Charles Bird King to paint the portraits from life from circa 1821 to 1837, and engaged James Hall (1793-1868), a judge and Treasurer of the State of Illinois, to research the subjects.
The project was not a financial success — the subscription price of $120 for the whole set was not enough to cover the costs — but the volumes remain an important record. When, on January 24, 1865, a fire at the Smithsonian Institution destroyed 295 of the original 300 portraits, the lithographs from McKenney’s book were all that remained.
Sold to a LiveAuctioneers bidder at the mid-estimate sum of $15,000 ($18,900 with buyer’s premium) was a good copy of A New General Atlas, Containing a Geographical and Historical Account of All the Empires, Kingdoms and other Dominions of the World. Published in London in 1721 by the English cartographer and engraver John Senex (1678-1740), the 34 double-page engraved maps have an American focus. There are six maps of American interest, including A New Map of the English Empire in America and A New Map of the English Empire in the Ocean of America or West Indies.
