Rare Book Monthly
Book Catalogue Reviews - December - 2005 Issue
Americana Including Black Americana From Michael Brown Rare Books
Council Bluffs circa 1865.
Likewise, not all southerners were pro-slavery. Angelina Grimke was the daughter of a slaveholder from Charleston, South Carolina, who moved north and became a vocal opponent of slavery. This caused her double trouble, as women speaking their minds was even less popular in the day than abolitionism. In 1836, she published her Appeal to the Christian Women of the South. The book was extremely unpopular in the South, with many southern postmasters burning it. Ms. Grimke would eventually be banned from her hometown of Charleston. It would not matter to Angelina Grimke, who along with her sister Sarah, would be voices for both black and women's rights throughout their lives. Item 46. $400.
Thomas Gisborne was an English clergyman with a different point of view from Angelina Grimke on the appropriate role for women. Gisborne also held anti-slavery views, but when it came to women, he believed their role was to be subordinate to men. He graced mankind with these sentiments in An Enquiry into the Duties of the Female Sex, published in 1798 (first American edition). He encouraged women to keep to their traditional, domestic roles. Actually, Gisborne was not the reactionary this may make him sound. He encouraged progressive means for women to raise their children, focusing on love rather than fear and punishment. He also expected men to live up to their duties. However, he was not able to see past the then prevalent view that women were destined by nature to a subservient role. Item 143. $450.
Item 184 is one of the collections of personal correspondence offered by Brown. They are letters received by Captain George Benedict of Ohio from his wife and other relatives. Capt. Benedict operated a steamboat on the Ohio River, which kept him away from home for long periods of time. Unfortunately, things weren't so great back on the farm. His family was left to deal with his alcoholic and abusive father. His wife writes of his father, "he went to Marietta yesterday and came home pretty bad last night and has kept it up all day...and talks scandalously to Polly..." Benedict would return home to stay in the mid-1850s and would go on to be a successful businessman and local political figure. There are 15 letters in all. $650.
Council Bluffs, Iowa, was one of the major starting points for journeys west in the 19th century. Deforrester Eaton was a notable Civil War and western immigrant photographer who settled in Council Bluffs after the War. Item 151 is a circa 1865 photograph he took of that city showing covered wagons outside an outfitter's store, apparently preparing for the journey west (see image this page). $2,000.
Should you ever get shot and lack an x-ray machine to locate the bullet, there is always Dr. Girdner's Telephonic Bullet Probe. This is a circular for a device "to aid the surgeon in determining, in a painless manner, the precise spot at which a leaden bullet is located..." Sounds like some primitive version of the x-ray, and likely a quite remarkable invention for its time, which was 1887. Item 164. $150.
Michael Brown Rare Books is found online at www.mbamericana.com or reached by phone at 215-387-9808.
