Search Results: Americana from Walkabout Books

Very good. Broadsheet, undated, but ca. 1915 (based on contemporary newspaper ads). 20" x 7", printed in red and black on front and all black on verso. Horizontal folding creases, otherwise very good. An attractive promotional piece issued by the New Home Land Company of Little Rock, Arkansas and promoting excursion fares via the Missouri Pacific and Iron Mountain railroad and lands along the line of the Rock Island Railway Promotes Arkansas as "The Land of Homes," where "fertile soil, long growing seasons, and mild climate make prosperous farmers, healthy families, and happy homes." The text is targeted at midwesterners, noting that "in Arkansas you can grow the same kind of crops and farm as you do in Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana" -- but with a longer growing season and at lower cost. The back includes detailed text relating to 15,000 acres for sale near the new town of Sparkman, along the Rock Island line. Not found in OCLC.

Centralia, IL: Brown's Business College, 1898. Softcover. Very good. Four-page printed circular (11.5" x 8.75") with photographic illustrations, accompanied by a mimeographed letter on Brown's letterhead and original mailing envelope. Folding creases and light handling wear; very good. Brown's Business College was a chain of business colleges located in the Midwest, started in Illinois in the 1870s by George W. Brown (1845-1918). Brown eventually grew the chain to at least 29 locations, where students could expect to receive instruction in accounting, business and office practice, writing, stenography, and the elements of success in business, generally. This four-page, illustrated circular announces the opening of the Centralia, Illinois location on September 5, 1898. It offers a brief description of the town and notes that although it is smaller than other Browns' locations, "its central location, its easy access to all points of southern Illinois, and the moderate prices of board for students give… Read More

Post-bound album containing 27 linen-backed silver prints showing (with one exception) residential and institutional construction projects completed using granite supplied by the North Carolina Granite Company of Mt. Airy. NC. The exception is a photo of a stack of flagstones at the quarry. Each photo is 7.5 x 9.5 inches, and nearly all have identifying information on the front. Label at the back of the album identifies it as "Book Number Twenty Two" and lists the photo numbers it contains. Labels at both front and back identify the album as on loan to Dearborn, MIchigan, sales agent Charles H. Gall. Includes images of the St. Charles Seminary (Overbrook, PA); Roman Catholic Church Rectory (Philadelphia); Zion Reformed Church (Baltimore); First Presbyterian Church (Mt. Airy, NC); First Evangelical Church (Williamsport, PA); Harlem Methodist Episcopal Church (Baltimore); Bethesda Methodist Episcopal Church (Salisbury, MD); Moravian Church (Mount Airy, NC); Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church (Baltimore);… Read More

Boston: Printed and Sold by James Loring, 1816. Hardcover. Good. Eighteenth American edition. 3.5? x 5.5?, 72 pp, in original paper-covered wooden boards with leather spine. Fair to good: about 1/3 of paper missing from front board, which is attached by one thread, old dampstaining, pages tanned. Although a very popular school text that was published in dozens of editions, this work is now fairly scarce in the marketplace.

Springfield and New York: Samuel Bowles & Company; Hurd & Houghton, 1866. Hardcover. Good. Early reprint (first published 1865). 452 pp, with colored folding map. Original brown cloth, worn at spine ends. Small bookplate ("Marcy Mills") and bookseller's label on front pastedown, another label partially removed from rear pastedown, part of rear free endpaper lacking. Binding tight, text clean, pages somewhat tanned. Wagner-Camp (410): "Samuel Bowles and his party left Atchison, Kansas on May 21, 1865 for San Francisco by way of Salt Lake and across central Nevada, stopping at Austin and Virginia City. They reached the Pacific at the end of June, and traveled overland up the the coast to British Columbia, returning to San Francisco by steamer. They visited Yosemite in August, and were back in New York by the end of September. This book is composed of Bowles's letters to the 'Springfield Republican', revised and expanded." Graff 370; Sabin 7077; Flake 767.

New York and Auburn: Miller, Orton & Mulligan, 1856. First Edition. Hardcover. Near fine. 236 pp, in original brown cloth with embossed floral decoration. Corners lighly bumped and rubbed, else fine. Contemporary private library label/bookplate of Samuel E. Howe on front pastedown; inscribed on the front free endpaper by Howe to his friend Charles P. Frissell, Esq.; and signed by Frissell in Burlington, VT, on the rear pastedown. Both men appear to have been in the fire insurance business in New England. Kaser (The Washington, D.C. of Fiction, #2): "Set in the 1850s, this satire is presented mostly in epistolary form, through letters written by Solomon Smooth....An advocate of the most inclusive republicanism, Smooth's letters to Uncle Sam describe the specific corruption of the Pierce administration and of Washington political life and society. The work includes descriptions of the National Hotel, African Amerians, Irishmen, office seekers, and legislators representing various states....The work… Read More

Chicago: A.C. McClurg, 1902. First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. 299 pp, in publisher's silvery cloth binding, decorated in black. Corners lightly bumped, spine slightly sunned, internals clean and sound. No dust jacket. Part of the Southern Sketches series.

Album containing eleven 7"x 9" professional linen-backed photographs showing the process and results of installing new street lights along a main commercial thoroughfare in Hamilton, Ohio. Hamilton is the county seat of Butler County, about 20 miles north of Cincinnati. In the early twentieth century, "the town was a heavy manufacturing center for vaults and safes, machine tools, cans for vegetables, paper, paper making machinery, locomotives, frogs and switches for railroads, steam engines, diesel engines, foundry products, printing presses, and automobile parts" (wiki). The photos show wide streets lined with businesses which, with the advent of increased automobile traffic, were undoubtedly eager for the most modern and effective methods of illumination. A wonderful set of facing night views shows how much brighter the new lights are. An additional 16 snapshots photos are laid into the album, most showing people posing with what appear to be temporary streetlights. Five were taken in front of the… Read More

Philadelphia: B. Graves, 1806. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good. 8vo, pp v, [1],648 + index, with one folding table, in original full calf with red spine label. Leather scuffed, corner torn from table, with small loss of text, otherwise sound and clean. Bookplate of Benjamin Lincoln Lear (1792-1832, attorney and godson of George Washington) on front pastedown, three manuscript notes in Lear's hand, and several newspaper clippings laid in -- all relating to gardening. "M'Mahon came from Ireland in 1796 and began to collect and export seeds of native American plants in 1800. His catalog of 1804 listed seeds of about 1,000 species. In 1806, he published his book The American Gardener's Calendar, that was for 50 years the standard gardening authority in America. There were eleven editions of his book by the last edition published in 1857. A general catalog of garden plants was published at the end of the book. He knew Jefferson and his store became the meeting place of botanists and horticulturists.… Read More

Baltimore: Gideon B. Smith, 1837. First Edition. Hardcover. Good. 8vo, 576 pp, containing 12 original issues, with no title page for the volume as a whole. Ex-library, rebound in green cloth. Wrappers not bound in, and only 7 issues (1-4 and 7-9) include a frontispiece illustration. Plates toned, mild to moderate foxing throughout, but still a decent reference copy.

Philadelphia: John Conrad, 1814. First Edition. Hardcover. Good. 9.75" x 6", viii, 473 pp, indexed. Bound in original quarter-leather and paper covered boards. Boards well worn, with much of the outer paper and 3/4 inch of leather at head of spine lost, hinges a bit wobbly, bookplates of Watts de Peyster Library and Franklin & Marshall College on front endpapers, inventory number on verso of title page. Otherwise unmarked, clean and sound. Begins with Volume I, Number 1 (September 25, 1913) and runs through Volume I, Number 26 (March 19, 1814), followed by Addenda. Sabin 1260. Published for just two years, this scarce periodical offers a weekly compilation of "domestic news from every part of the continent," as well as reports on financial and legal matters, foreign policy, and government documents and reports containing a wealth of information and relating to the War of 1812.

New York: American Temperance Union, 1853. First Edition. Softcover. Very good. Disbound pamphlet without wrappers. 24 pp; very good. Maine was the first state in the nation to enact a bill criminalizing all purchases of alcohol other than for medicinal or industrial uses. The so-called "Maine Law" was passed in May, 1851. Here, national temperance leaders refute arguments about problems caused by the law, provide statistics supporting its benefits, and argue for similar laws to be enacted in every state.

Boston: True and Greene, 1825. First Edition. 22 pp, complete with original wrappers, but with the stitching perished, so gatherings are loose. Pink staining to front wrapper, edgewear, otherwise very good. Scarce pamphlet criticizing monopolies in general and, more specifically, the factions who opposed a new (toll-free) bridge in Boston because it would be detrimental to the interests of those holding a charter (and collecting tolls) for the existing (Charles River) bridge. Moser's Daniel Webster bibliography attributes this eloquently written pamphlet to Massachusetts State Senator David Henshaw (1791-1852). We have not been able to confirm this, but it seems reasonable, given that he was one of the leaders of the Democratic Party in Boston, belonged to a group of real estate investors who would benefit from population growth spurred by the proposed new bridge, and "represented the growing group of Bostonians who were shut out from the traditionally privileged class" (Haines and Sherwood, Supreme… Read More

[Johnstown, PA]: Blauch & Benshoff. Softcover. Very good. Undated, ca. 1909. Four page printed circular, 7.75" x 5.5". Folding creases, small chips and tears; very good. Claiming to quote an unnamed "prominent Illinois Central Railroad, official," the Johnstown, Pennsylvania real estate firm of Blauch & Benshoff asserts that "Louisiana's swamp lands will support a populations of nearly 5,000,000 people when they are reclaimed and properly tilled and the Illinois Central railroad intends to see that these millions of acres are brought into fertility within a comparatively short period of time." The idea that swamp reclamation is an achievable goal is supported by just one example -- the drainage of Klamath Lake in Oregon, which began in 1906. But these promoters are sure the Illinois Central will find a path to success--perhaps by bringing in dredges no longer needed for digging the Panama Canal--such that that "Louisiana should be known as the garden of Chicago, Memphis, and St Louis." Statistics… Read More

New York: Harper & Brothers, 1864. Hardcover. Good. Third edition, revised and enlarged (with mining content not found in the first edition). 251 pp, with frontis engraving of the Mowry Silver Mines. Original brown cloth boards are edgeworn, with corners rubbed through, chips at spine ends, and cloth partially split at front joint. Penciled gift inscription on front endpaper, internals otherwise clean and sound. Includes sections on the geography, the condition of Arizona and Sonora from 1859-1864, the mines of Arizona and surrounding areas, a mineralogical sketch, governmental issues, and the southern railroad route.

Printed by the Compton Litho. Company, St. Louis. Trade card, 3 1/4 x 5 1/8 inches. Undated, but 1880s. Some light rubbing to image, one tiny corner chip; very good. This uncommon and attractive card invites inquiries "for full and complete information touching on the products of Arkansas, her climate, soil, timber, mineral lands, etc" to be diected either to the Arkanas Department at the New Orleans Centennial Exposition (1884) or to Thomas Essex, land agents of the St. Louis, Iron Mountain, and Southern Railway (which ran between St. Louis and Texarkana). Railroads were essential to the economic recovery of the post-Civil War South. Seeking to increase the amount of traffic they carried, the railroads actively promoted diversification in agriculture, encouraging people to come to Arkansas and grow new crops--among them the luscious fruits shown on this card.

New York and London; New Haven: Wiley & Putnam; B.L. Hamlen, 1841. First Edition. Hardcover. Good+. 8vo, xvi, 439 pp, with frontis portrait of Trumbull, 23 plates (including two folding maps). Bound in publisher's green cloth with blind-stamped decoration, gilt spine lettering. Corners bumped, abrasion to front pastedown where a bookplate was apparently removed, moderate foxing and toning throughout; binding sound. Good to very good overall. Trumbull (J1756-1843) was an American artist of the early independence period, notable for his historical paintings of the American Revolutionary War, of which he was a veteran. Pages 405-439 of this work consist of a catalogue of Trumbull's paintings then on exhiit at Yale and include considerable detail on the historical circumstances behind each Revolutionary War painting.

Hot Springs, AR, 1906. First Edition. Softcover. Very good. 6" x 5", 50, [2] pp, with 27 half-tone photographic portraits, in original stapled wrappers. Minor creasing at base of spine; clean and sound. William Pinkerton (1846-1923) was the son of Allan Pinkerton, founder of the famous Pinkerton Detective Agency. After Allan Pinkerton died in 1884, William and his brother Robert took charge of the agency, developing innovative crime-solving techniques, building an extensive collection of mug shots, and newspaper articles about wanted outlaws, and creating criminal histories on known offenders. In this address, William discusses so-called "bank sneak thieves" -- smooth-talking, well-dressed professional con men who executed carefully planned thefts of cash or securities from while bank employees were distracted by confederates. The portraits show many of the most notorious of this type of criminal.

Softcover. Very good. 5" x 3.5", [10] pp, with several half-tone photographic illustrations. Light creasing and general handling wear; very good. Scarce promotional booklet for the Berry Schools, which were founded by Martha McChesney Berry (1865-1942) to serve the children of tenant farmers and poor landowners who did not have access to quality education. After beginning with a Sunday School in the late 1890s, Berry opened a Boys Industrial School in 1902, and a Girls Industrial School in 1909. (She would go on to found a college, as well). As described in this booklet, the purpose of the schools was "to train the poor boys and girls of the Southern mountains to become efficient citizens and homemakers" and to graduate "farmers who know how to farm, and dairymen, fruit-growers, carpenters, and others, who have received a very practical and thorough education in their several trades." The booklet describes the costs of operating the school and seeks donations to meet current expenses, increase the… Read More

[Minneapolis]: Thompson Yards, Inc, 1916. Broadside, 20.75 x 9.75 inches. Old folding creases, a few short, closed tears at margins; very good. Minneapolis-based company Thompson Yards tells farmers that diversification in agriculture is the road to wealth -- urging them to buy silos on credit on the grounds that they can't go wrong if they raise cattle while growing alfalfa and a variety of grain crops. In the 1880s and 1890s, the Dakotas had been widely promoted by land agents as ideal for growing wheat, and many had settled there convinced their fortunes would be made by the crop. But Dakota farmers had suffered greatly when their wheat crops were devastated by disease ("black rust") or excessive heat. While this broadside may read as an advertiser's hype (which it is), it was not entirely wrong - in the first decades of the twentieth centuries Dakota farmers had success growing oats, corn, barley, rye, flax, sugar beets, sunflowers, potatoes, and other crops. With demand high… Read More