Babe Ruth, Charles Lindbergh, and Explorers' Journals Lead Americana Auction

A 1920 tour contract guaranteeing George Herman 'Babe' Ruth $10,000 for 10 exhibition games in Cuba leads Heritage Auctions’ November 16 Historical Documents and Texana auction.

“This contract captures Babe Ruth as he was becoming an international sports attraction,” said Heritage Historical Manuscripts Consignment Director Doug Dreier. “The agreement documents the scale of that rise, while placing Ruth in a larger baseball story that included competition with Cuban stars such as Christobal Torriente at a time when Black and Latino players were excluded from organized baseball in the United States.”

Also going under the hammer is a group of navigational notes handwritten by Charles A. Lindbergh showing his preparations for the historic nonstop solo flight in the Spirit of St. Louis from New York to Paris which he completed May 20–21, 1927, to win the $25,000 Orteig Prize.

Aviation and exploration highlights include Amelia Earhart signatures on her personal company letterhead, Francis Skead’s logbook of the HMS Enterprise through the Strait of Magellan, and the whaling journal of the ship Maria of Nantucket, with an account of the Republic of Texas

Other highlights include:

• an eight-page 1853 autograph letter from Sam Houston to his brother, John “Jack” in which he denounces the administration of U.S. President Franklin Pierce and warns of abolitionist “disunionism”
• a rare 1820 document from Stephen F. Austin’s time as a judge in Arkansas in which he argues on behalf of a formerly enslaved woman seeking freedom
• Frederic Remington’s heavily annotated copy of Water Color Painting by H.W. Herrick
• a signed letter from Mary, Queen of Scots, summoning the Earl Marischal to Parliament weeks after the murder of Lord Darnley
• a signed royal warrant from King Charles I
• a letter from Second Earl of Sunderland Robert Spencer announcing the death of Charles II and the ascension of James II
• a signed autograph letter from Napoleon Bonaparte rallying the Army of Italy, and a signed Napoleon disciplinary order on the fate of 16 deserters on Elba
• a typed, signed Winston Churchill letter addressed to Louis J. Alber, manager of his American lecture tour