Lot 311: STUART, Granville (1834-1918). Montana as it Is: Being a General Description of its Resources

STUART, Granville (1834-1918). Montana as it Is: Being a General Description of its Resources, Both Mineral and Agricultural, including a Complete Description of the Face of the Country, its Climate, etc. New York: C.S. Westcott & Co., 1865.

8 o (229 x 145 mm). Large folding lithographed map (602 x 790 mm) of the territory of Montana after W.W. de Lacy by Rae Smith, N.Y., colored by hand in outline (a few skilful reinforcements along folds on verso repairing a few small holes.) (Title slightly spotted.) Original printed wrappers (rebacked preserving most of original spine, some spotting to upper cover); green quarter morocco slipcase. Provenance: William J. Holliday (his sale Parke-Bernet, 22 April 1954, lot 1058); Frank T. Siebert (his sale Sotheby's, 28 October 1999, lot 888).

FIRST EDITION of "the rarest Montana book" (Streeter), with related items laid-in, described below. The author was one of four men to first discover Placer Gold in Montana on 2 May 1858. Following Stuart's Preface and 14-page survey of the territory are dictionaries and explanatory notes on the Snake language and Chinnook jargon. The text and accompanying map also provide itineraries of routes across the plains. The map was prepared by W.W. De Lacy, a draftsman in the U.S. Surveyor General's office in Helena, Montana.

In a 1918 letter to C.N. Kessler of Helena, Stuart noted that only 300 of the 1,500 copies of the book included the map. A few had been sent to Montana but were damaged in shipping, and most of the remainder were destroyed by fire in New York. Another letter by Stuart to Kessler, accompanying this lot, states that he himself had but one copy of the map. Also included are a letter of 1864 from Gilpatrick & Bryant of Helena to Stuart discussing the return of both damaged and undamaged copies of the book (16 copies total); a printed broadside history, "Montana Pioneer Prospectors," providing a biographical notice of Stuart and David B. Weaver; and a letter from H.H. Bancroft to Stuart, 1884, soliciting information about events in the Montana territory for his history of the region. Wright Howes notes that there are four issues of the de Lacy map: "The correct issue of the map bears the copyright date 1865 and was lithographed by Rae Smith," as here. Graff 4019; Howes S-1097 ("dd," "the most cherished Montana book"); Streeter IV:2217; Wagner-Camp-Becker 424; Wheat Mapping the Transmississippi West 1117.