Rare Book Monthly

Articles - June - 2012 Issue

Fine Books & Manuscripts at Bonhams June 19th

Lot 3190:  [Titanic]  Diary of a trip gone bad

Lot 3190: [Titanic] Diary of a trip gone bad

For the special collections library or the collector specializing in the statistics of the earliest days of the United States there is lot 3192.  It is the 1800 census of the United States.   –

3192

UNITED STATES CENSUS.

Return of the Whole Number of Persons within the Several Districts of the United States, according to "An act providing for the second Census or Enumeration of the Inhabitants of the United States." [Washington, D.C.]: Printed [by William Duane] for the House of Representatives, [1801].

Folio (446 x 273 mm). [2], 4, [1], [1 blank], 5-12, 12*, [1 blank], 13-34, [36] pp. 20th century half morocco and marbled boards. Title page with a stain and a marginal tear, a little soiling and creasing at ends, final leaf with some old repaired edge tears, binding scuffed at edges. Untrimmed.

EXTREMELY RARE FOLIO FIRST EDITION OF THE SECOND U.S. CENSUS. The second U.S. census was conducted, as mandated, 10 years after the first. It provides greater statistical detail, with another layer of age brackets and it leaves out free Indians who are exempt from taxes. The returns of 21 states and the three territories (Northwest, Indiana and Mississippi) are present. The leaf between pages 4 & 5 is a summary of the census that includes returns for Tennessee and a corrected return for Maryland although James Madison's address on p 2 states that returns for Tennessee had not yet been received.

This is a most important document at a key moment in American demographics, printed just months before negotiations were opened for the Louisiana Purchase. These 1801 returns show that the population of the whole of the Northwest Territory was substantially less than that of Rhode Island and that the Indiana Territory had about the same population as D.C. (shown as part of Virginia). The last copy traced by the sales records of AmericanaExchange was listed by Goodspeed's in 1921. Howes R-221; Sabin 70146.

Estimate:

US$ 10,000 - 20,000

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