The Barnum and Bailey program for the season of 1912, with a total of 16 fantastic acts, including: “The Spectacle of Cleopatra”; “Three Royal Riding Acts” (including “Dainty and dexterous displays of principal bareback equitation by the charming exemplar of grace and agility, Miss Victoria Davenport”); “A Complete Number of.....
This colorful broadside promotes a tight-rope act performed by an unnamed gentleman pictured in numerous illustrations here. He is shown in three different vignettes performing the “sensational drop high to low wire,” the “sensational drop with ladder,” and “nerve tantalizing tricks wire swinging.” Arrows in the illustrations indicate the motion.....
A spectacular Mardi Gras poster for the Krewe of Proteus floats for 1896, depicting a wide variety of animals—here dubbed “Dumb Society,”—in imaginative situations. Represented here are twenty floats with titles such as “Presidential Sport,” “At Home…Dancing,” “In the Surf,” and “A Royal Banquet.” One marvelous float entitled “Five.....
A captivating poster featuring the Krewe of Rex’s “Heavenly Bodies” floats for the 1896 Mardi Gras. One of the oldest participants in Mardi Gras and the source of many of its storied traditions, the Krewe of Rex was founded in 1872 on the occasion of the visit to New.....
An rare silk broadside announcing the celebration of the U. S. Centennial aboard the excursion steamer “Plymouth Rock,” in Shanghai, China. The day long program included a “Salute of One Hundred Guns at Sunrise,” a “national Salute at 12 Meridian,” a reading of the Declaration of Independence by O. B......
An attractive timetable for the “Maple Leaf Route” of the Chicago Great Western Railway. Includes schedules, rates, and general information, as well as a large map illustrating the Route through Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri and Kansas, with a green maple leaf printed over the area of service. The map shows.....
An impressive brochure and itinerary for Southern Railway System tour of the Battle of Chickamauga battlefield with five routes noted through Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia to Chattanooga. Includes detailed accounts of various aspects of the battle (corresponding to segments of the tour); nine monuments are pictured; also entrances to the.....
Illustrated brochure for the Cody Road into Yellowstone via the Burlington Route of the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy lines. “Have you ever heard of the Cody Road into Yellowstone Park?” This brochure is happy to educate. Text and photographs “Along the Road” offer something of a guided tour of.....
An unrecorded broadside advertising a performance in Wells, New York given by a talented blind musician and singer who also found work tuning pianos. This broadside announces the performance of blind musician H. S. Spencer who gave a concert of vocal and instrumental music on the evening of 4.....
A Confederate almanac by noted southern printer Sigmund Goetzel, evidently acquired during the Civil War by Union soldier James Eldridge. Containing the astronomical matter typical of almanacs, this War-time publication includes a table of the moon’s phases for the cities of Richmond, Raleigh, Charleston and Mobile with a middle column.....
A rare and visually striking broadside reproducing the joint resolution passed by the legislature of the state of California to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment, including the facsimile signatures of those who voted both for and against it. The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was the first of the.....
This attractive folding brochure features evocative illustrations of the Historic Deadwood Days of ‘76 festival, including “Sioux Indian Battles and War Dances Every Day,” a covered wagon train, Paris Williams,”the most ensational Woman Rodeo Performer in America.” One image shows President and Mrs. Calvin Coolidge taken into the Sioux Tribe.....
This appealing and apparently unrecorded broadside advertises hiking excursions up Mt. Tamalpais, some 22 miles north of San Francisco in Marin County, California. “Personally conducted” by one Dawson Mayer, these excursions accommodated up to 60 people and cost $2.50, including a luncheon at the Tavern of Tamalpais. Offered between May.....
A rare poster for Stone & Murray’s Circus, advertising acts by some of the leading equestrian performers of the day, as well as acrobats and clowns, this example used to announce a summertime appearance in Old Town, Maine. Illustrated with nineteen lively vignettes of equestrian acts, acrobats, jugglers, and clowns.....
A land promotion broadside advertising transportation via the St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern Railway to the company’s land grant and elsewhere. Promising the “shortest and quickest route” to points in Missouri, Arkansas and Texas, this broadside publishes the “liberal rates and allowance of baggage for Seekers of land.....
An unusual indenture binding a young German immigrant woman to the chief warden of the New Orleans city jail, where she was employed for her “understanding of the household business.” This remarkable indenture specifies the financial arrangement and terms of employment for one Annah David of Anspach, Germany—aged twenty-three and.....
A souvenir program for La Fiesta de Los Angeles, a celebration of the history of California, which took place between 10 April and 13 April 1894 in downtown Los Angeles. Includes an account of the grand carnival, with its origins and purpose, as well as an historical sketch of Southern.....
Apparently unrecorded Great Depression era sheet music related to the establishment of Social Security. This rousing social activist song includes such lyrics as: “Millions of patriots march along - Tramp, tramp - Swinging along to a vict’ry song - It’s a fight for the right - For Americans never fail.....
An engraved invitation to Lincoln's second inaugural ball, filled out with the name of Mrs. Hugh McCulloch, the wife of Lincoln’s Comptroller of Currency (and later Secretary of the Treasury), accompanied by the original envelope addressed to Hugh McCulloch. Portraits of Lincoln and Andrew Johnson appear above a list.....
A scarce broadside for an exhibition featuring a Welsh dwarf, a “white negro,” Hottentot Venus, and exotic imported animals. This performance was held at a fair in Hyde Park during Queen Victoria’s coronation which took place at Westminster Abbey on Thursday 28 June 1838—a year after Victoria, aged eighteen.....
A scarce pamphlet promoting Block Island as a summer resort destination. Block Island, Rhode Island—located just fifteen miles south of mainland Rhode Island—was dubbed during its heyday “the Bermuda of the North.” “There has ever been a peculiar charm about the islands of the sea,” so begins the text.....
A promotional brochure for the rejuvenated Palm Beaches, “moulded for posterity and bulwarked against adversity… preparing for a season greater than ever before -- when mass and class alike will visit the area.” The climate, clubs, churches, chain stores, transportation, recreation, price of foodstuffs, etc. are described. “Florida has no.....
A spectacular oversize broadside on linen printed in three colors and multiple typefaces, advertising an agricultural fair in Dedham, Mass. in September of 1861. While the main event for the Dedhamites and others in the region would have been the horses and exhibitions of horsemanship advertised here, today it is.....
An unrecorded publisher’s broadside promoting Parson Brownlow’s autobiography and a Civil War pocket map. Published a year before Brownlow returned to Union-occupied Tennessee where he later became governor in 1865, The Portrait and Biography of Parson Brownlow (Indianapolis: Asher & Co., 1862) also included Brownlow’s last editorial in the.....
A scarce advertising broadside for one of the more notable theater companies producing Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the late-nineteenth century. Dramatizations of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s influential novel began in 1852, the year of publication, and from the beginning included elements of blackface minstrelsy—a well established form of stage entertainment.....