1803 Stokes County NORTH CAROLINA Unrecorded BROADSIDE regarding the Louisiana Purchase
Raleigh, North Carolina: 1803. [NORTH CAROLINA]. [BROADSIDE]. Raleigh, December 1, 1803. / Sir, / Feeling it to be our duty to furnish our Constituents, from time to / time, with such information respecting the proceedings of the General Assembly, as / we deem important; and an opportunity now offering itself of writing to you, we / eagerly embrace it for this purpose; though, as yet, not much business of conse - / quence has been decided. / [followed by six paragraphs of text and a list of 10 bills that had been introduced thus far for the assembly to consider]. Signed in type “Joseph Cloud, / John Bostick. / Henry B. Dobson.” Raleigh, (NC): 1803. Printed broadside, 13-1/4 x 8-1/8 inches, employing two styles and three sizes of type for a down to business message for the folks back home. Addressed on the verso: “Mr. James Boteright and neighbors”; a James Boatright (1769-1837) married Debra West in Stokes County, North Carolina, in 1805 and died in Giles County, Tennessee. Not in Hummel (which locates only five earlier North Carolina broadsides), Thornton, or American Imprints. Not recorded on OCLC. Folded (with creases, several small breaks at corner folds). Several small holes, one just touching a letter, some foxing and age toning, but a very good copy of an apparently unrecorded early North Carolina broadside. Housed in a custom slipcase with leather spine and gilt titles.
A precursor to today’s slick constituent mailings, this broadside was issued by the three representatives from Stokes County, Cloud, serving in the state senate, and Bostick and Dobson, serving in the lower house. Printed shortly after the 1803 session began, they send news of elections, James Turner as Governor, Joseph Gales as state printer, and upcoming votes for attorney general, “Council of State,” and various judicial openings; a long list of bills follows, including attempts to amend the Judicial System and existing Land Laws, an effort to “provide for the extension of the boundary line between this state and the state of South-Carolina,” and one that would establish a “Mutual Insurance Company against Fire in this State.” A bill “for the establishing a Town on the lands of Thomas Rivers, in our county” is noted as already “passed into law.”
A final paragraph relates to the recent news of the ratification of the treat with France on 21 October that ceded to the United State the vast new lands of the Louisiana Purchase: “A pamphlet has just been published at Washington City, giving a more authentic account of the new country of Louisiana, which the government of the United States has lately purchased from France, than any thing which has before appeared. It is reprinting here, and if not before, on our return, we shall favour you with the perusal of it.” The report refers to a Raleigh printing of “An Account of Louisiana” (Raleigh, 1803; Wagner-Camp-Becker 2b:11), which was long thought to exist in but a single copy at the New York Public Library, but, when questioned in 1951, staff reported having been unable to verify the place of publication. Since then, some 20 years ago, a second copy was found and the type used on that printing matched the type used for the pamphlet with contemporary newspaper work by Joseph Gales in Raleigh. Item #100081
Price: $5,500.00