Auctions | June 16, 2023

Early July 1776 Broadside of Declaration of Independence to Auction

Heritage Auctions

First broadside edition of the Declaration of Independence printed in Massachusetts 

Heritage will present the first broadside edition of the Declaration of Independence printed in Massachusetts at auction on July 8. There are only six recorded copies of this historic broadside, and the one going under the hammer is one of just two in private hands - the only other copy in private hands, the James S. Copley-William S. Reese copy, sold at Christie's on May 25, 2022, for $2,100,000. The others are held at Harvard University, Georgetown University, the Massachusetts Historical Society and the Peabody Essex Museum.

While the Declaration was being distributed in regional newspapers, just 13 broadside editions of the Declaration of Independence were printed between July and August 1776. They originated in print shops scattered across Pennsylvania, New York, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Massachusetts. John Rogers printed the copy offered in this event in Salem at the shop owned by Ezekiel Russell from which The American Gazette was published in 1776. 

This Declaration of Independence once belonged to Philip David Sang, who famously collected and studied 18th and 19th century American manuscripts often loaned to or donated to universities, museums and libraries nationwide. This is the only Declaration broadside printed in four columns.

Abraham Lincoln Assassination Reward Poster
1/5
Heritage Auctions

Abraham Lincoln Assassination Reward Poster

Alejandro Jodorowsky's Dune Bible
2/5
Heritage Auctions

Alejandro Jodorowsky's Dune Bible

An Extraordinarily Rare Handwritten Sigmund Freud Manuscript
3/5
Heritage Auctions

An Extraordinarily Rare Handwritten Sigmund Freud Manuscript

Image Archive of Handwritten Hotel Room Registration Receipts and Room Keys, Including Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Signed Name
4/5
Heritage Auctions

Image Archive of Handwritten Hotel Room Registration Receipts and Room Keys, Including Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Signed Name

Autograph Album Signed by Abraham Lincoln
5/5
Heritage Auctions

Autograph Album Signed by Abraham Lincoln

Other highlights of the Historical sale include:

* the archive of more than 300 handwritten hotel room registration receipts, inventory of phone calls, and meals eaten from the Hotel Albert in Selma, Alabama, during the fight for civil rights, November 1964 through June 1966 - this includes Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's handwritten receipt from one of those turning points:, January 18, 1965, when he was attacked while checking into the hotel

* numerous documents signed and written by President Abraham Lincoln, including an autograph album he signed during a New Year's Day reception at the White House on January, 1, 1863 

* the earliest example of an assassination reward broadside, a $30,000 reward for the capture of John Wilkes Booth for Lincoln's assassination at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865. Later broadsides, among them one in this very auction, would increase this reward to $50,000.

* a three-page missive written by Ringo Starr to friend Doreen Walker in which the former Richard Starkey announces he has joined the Beatles after receiving a phone call

* the Dune Bible, a luxuriously giant tome with 268 monochrome photographic reproduction plates and 11 color plates created to sell a vision of a Dune movie to be directed in the early 1970s by Alejandro Jodorowsky which never came to fruition. There are only four known copies of this book which features the film's storyboard with dialogue, captions, stage directions and complete character studies and depictions of the sets and vehicles.

* Sigmund Freud's handwritten manuscript for his seminal Dreams in Folklore on which he collaborated with Professor David Oppenheim, a classical mythology and literature student who discussed folklore in terms of Freud's psychoanalysis