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Charleston, Indiana, 1837. Broadside, 18.25” x 11.5”. Addressed and postmarked on verso. CONDITION: Foxed, light damp-stains, old folds with some losses to lettering at folds, 3.75” tear vertical tear into printed area at top. 2.5” horizontal break in lettering at top, light toning along folds.

An apparently unrecorded broadside advertising lots in a nascent frontier town in Indiana, assuring readers that this promotion is more than mere “puff.”

This broadside advertises forty lots for sale in the new neighborhood of Charleston, Indiana, which was laid out in 1837 by Joseph P. Anthony, a carpenter by trade, who came to the area to farm with his sister Judith and his brother-in-law Abraham Nordyke in 1835. The land is advertised as “on a high level plain overlooking the river” with “numerous” potential mill seats and “The most extensive tract of fertile and fast populating country.” The lots would be sold “at public outcry” on December 25th and 26th, and “Purchasers can have their deeds on the day of sale, upon giving their notes with approved security.” Since Anthony’s own relocation there, the area of Charleston had grown, and, concluding that “it would be a profitable venture to lay out a town,” Anthony had it surveyed by William Delvin in November, 1837. The broadside notes that the settlement was particularly seeking “many mechanics and other persons who usually inhabit towns,” and offers assurance that tradesmen “would, no doubt, be amply supported, and encouraged in it, as the distance is considerable from this place to any…[other] towns.” This campaign was somewhat successful, and several lots were sold, but although Charleston thrived for a few years, it ultimately “did not come unto the expectations of the founder,” and Anthony eventually “removed to Huntington, where he died some years later.” Charleston was located on the Salamonie River between Marion (to the southwest) and Huntington (to the northeast), about a mile east of where Mt. Etna remains today.

On the verso of the broadside is a postmark, dated December 11th, from Muncietown, Indiana, and the address in ink of Charles Anthony (apparently no relation to Joseph) at the Snowhill P.O. in Clinton County, Ohio. Anthony, born in 1798 to Quaker parents in Richmond, Virginia, moved to Ohio in his early teens and began practicing law in Cincinnati as a young man. He was elected to state legislature three times, was instrumental in reforming Ohio’s prison system, and served as a General in the Ohio Militia during the Mexican-American War.

REFERENCES: Bash, Frank Sumner. History of Huntington County, Indiana : a narrative account of its historical progress, its people, and its principal interests (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Co., 1914), pp. 105–6, 154–55.

Item #7787

Price: $950.00