c. 1782-1890s Group Lot of Seventeen Mixed Items of Early American and Maritime Ephemera, Fine to Very Fine.
This group lot comprises 17 paper items of early American financial and maritime ephemera, spanning roughly a century from 1782 into the 1890s, headed by the following:

1. May 24, 1782 Connecticut Treasury Office war debt certificate, issued to Azariah Bigelow of Colchester for £4.18.11 Lawful Money, payable in Spanish Milled Dollars with interest at six percent per annum following the cessation of hostilities with Great Britain, signed by J. Lawrence, Treasurer, within a decorative typeset border.

2. May 21, 1794 bill of exchange drawn at Portsmouth for 130 dollars, payable at ten days' sight to Mr. John Berry, drawn on John Stagge, Esq., merchant of New York, within an engraved decorative border featuring a ship vignette.

3. July 3, 1801 bill of lading for the brig Edwin, Robert Follansbee master, shipped from Newburyport and bound for Bordeaux with four bales of goats' wool, headed by an oval woodcut vignette of a ship.

4. August 7, 1858 stock certificate of the Dark Hollow Mining Company of the State of New York, issued to Josiah Barker for six hundred shares of fifty dollars each, signed by Barker as President and William Danforth as Secretary, with an ornate vignette of a seated woman among mining equipment.

5. October 6, 1865 pilot's receipt from the pilot boat Jane, No. 1, New York, billing the captain and owners of a bark for pilotage, bearing a canceled two-cent U.S. Internal Revenue stamp and accompanied by a printed pilot's order slip.

The balancing 7 pieces round out this lot with a Boston retail invoice, a New England town account for civic upkeep, a Boston stock broker's account slip, a Civil War-era revenue stamp tax law, a pair of Reconstruction-era Virginia county tax receipts, a pair of late-nineteenth-century Maryland tax receipts, and an unissued fire insurance stock certificate. (17 items)

Provenance: Collection of Ambassador J. William Middendorf II.