“AMERICA’S FIRST AERONAUT”

A rare and visually captivating ballooning broadside, advertising an early flight by “America’s first aeronaut,” carried out just a year after his first ascent in the United States. Charles Ferson Durant (1805–1873) was an eighteen-year-old New Yorker on July 9, 1824 when he witnessed French aeronaut Eugene Robertson make a......