Auction 5: Lots 45-54

45. DAY, J. M., et al. (eds.). Post Office Papers of the Republic of Texas 1836-1839.... Austin: Texas State Library [Texian Press], 1966. iv [2] 238 + iv [2] 239 pp. 2 vols., 8vo, original green cloth. Fore-edges spotted, otherwise fine. Scarce.

First edition, limited edition (500 copies). Documentary compilation—indispensable for the study of Republic of Texas postal history. (2 vols.)
($100-200)

 

46. DE CORDOVA, J[acob]. Lecture on Texas...at Philadelphia, New York, Mount Holly, Brooklyn, and Newark. Also, a Paper Read...before the New York Geographical Society, April 15th, 1856. Philadelphia: Crozet, 1858. 32 pp. 12mo, original blue printed wrappers bound in later tan boards with brown cloth backstrip. Fragile wraps with marginal browning and minor wear.

First edition. Basic Texas Books 38n. Howes D199. De Cordova, one of the earliest Jewish settlers in Texas, was known as the "Publicity Agent for an Empire" as a result of his promotional efforts on behalf of Texas in the U.S. and Europe (New Handbook II:556-57). The author published an important map of Texas (Martin & Martin 39), two Texas newspapers, and the most authoritative guides to the State issued in the 1850s. His activities were responsible for attracting many emigrants to Texas in the latter half of the nineteenth century. This guide includes sections on acquiring land, flora and fauna, health benefits, agriculture, viticulture, stock-raising (with detailed monetary breakdown on the advantages of cattle raising in Texas), water power, Native Americans (divided into two categories, Comanche and "civilized"), railroads, sporting, and down-to-earth, sometimes humorous, advice on "Persons Who Ought Not to Emigrate to Texas," "To the Ladies," and "To Widows and Old Maids."
($200-350)

 

47. DE MÉZIÈRES, Athanase. Athanase De Mézières and the Louisiana-Texas Frontier, 1768-1780: Documents Published for the First Time, from the Original Spanish and French Manuscripts.... Translated, into English; Edited and Annotated, by Herbert Eugene Bolton. Glendale: Arthur H. Clark, 1914. 351 + 392 pp., plates, map, text illustrations. 2 vols., 8vo, original red cloth, t.e.g. Endpapers browned, fore-edges slightly foxed.

First edition. Basic Texas Books 41: "This work provides the best insight into the Indians of Texas during the period, and into the French and Spanish activities among them." Clark & Brunet 23. Howes B584. Rader 392. Rittenhouse 66. Tate 1686: "Explanatory text of 252 documents concerning the role of Athanase de Mézières in efficiently overseeing Spanish claims in East Texas and Louisiana. An extremely valuable source of information on Texas Indians—especially the Caddoan tribes—and Spanish attempts to win their favor through trading arrangements." Tyler, Big Bend, p. 240. "For the light they throw on Indian affairs in the north and east Texas area for the period between 1768 and 1779 there is no single group of documents so important as the reports of De Mézières" (Handbook I:486-7). (2 vols.)
($300-400)


Item 48, frontispiece

48. DE SHIELDS, James T. Cynthia Ann Parker. The Story of Her Capture at the Massacre of the Inmates of Parker's Fort; of her Quarter of a Century Spent among the Comanches, as the Wife of the War Chief, Peta Nocona; and of her Recapture at the Battle of Pease River, by Captain L. S. Ross, of the Texian Rangers..."Truth is Stranger than Fiction." St. Louis: Published by the Author, 1886. 80 pp., frontispiece portrait. 12mo, original olive gilt pictorial cloth. Binding slightly rubbed, light marginal staining to blank margins of a few leaves, generally fine. Laid in is a 4 pp. leaflet The Fall of Fort Parker (Groesbeck, ca. 1935) describing the captivity and related matters, offering for sale a 66 pp. work by De Shields on Cynthia Ann Parker, and announcing that "the people of Limestone County plan to stage a gigantic pageant on May 19, 1936, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Fall of Fort Parker.... Make your plans now to attend this brilliant spectacle."

First edition. Ayer 63. Dobie, p. 33. Graff 1064. Hoover 29: "One of the more unusual captivity stories, Cynthia Ann was the mother of...Comanche chieftain, Quanah Parker. Her name was legendary for generations in the Southwest." Howes D278. Rader 1126. Raines, p. 67: "A story of painful but absorbing interest." Tate 2280. Notable American Women III:15-16. In 1836 at the raid on Fort Parker (in present Limestone County) nine-year old Cynthia Ann was captured by the Quahadas of the Staked Plains, the wildest of the Comanche bands. She was adopted into the tribe and adapted well, learning to set up a teepee, preserve buffalo meat, tan and decorate skins for clothing, etc. Five years later she married a Comanche war chief, to whom she bore several children (including Quanah Parker, the greatest and last Comanche chief). In 1860 she was forcibly "rescued" by Capt. Sul Ross, but she never became reconciled to white ways and tried several times to escape and rejoin her Comanche family. New Handbook V:57-58, 61-62.
($300-500)

 

49. DE VILBISS, John Wesley. Reminiscences and Events in the Ministerial Life of John Wesley De Vilbiss, (Deceased) Formerly a Member of the West Texas Annual Conference by a Number of Authors, and the Compiler Rev. H. A. Graves.... Galveston: W. A. Shaw, 1886. 190 pp., engraved portraits. 8vo, original dark green cloth. Binding slightly rubbed and with a few spots, generally fine. Scarce.

First edition. Dobie, p. 66: "The very essence of pioneering." Not in standard bibliographies. De Vilbiss (1818-1885), a saddler turned Methodist minister, volunteered for itinerant missionary service in the Republic of Texas in 1842, working the Egypt circuit on the Colorado River from Fayette County to Matagorda and the valleys of the Lavaca and Navidad rivers. He is said to have preached the first Protestant sermon in San Antonio (1844). Included is an account of his journey from Ohio to Texas via New Orleans in 1842 with Littleton Fowler and four other ministers, camp meetings with Texas Rangers standing guard against hostile Indians, ministering to Black soldiers at Fort Inge, etc. New Handbook II:610.
($300-600)

 

50. DEWEES, W. B. Letters from an Early Settler of Texas.... Compiled by Cara Cardelle [pseud. of Emmaretta Cara Kimball Crawford]. Louisville: Morton & Griswold, 1852. 312 [8, ads] pp. 8vo, original brown blind-stamped cloth. Some light wear (spine tips frayed, one tear at lower joint), endpapers lightly soiled, one signature loose.

First edition (followed by editions in 1854 and 1858; this first edition is very rare in commerce). Bradford 1311. Clark, Old South III:298: "The preface states that the compiler...Emmaretta C. Kimball, chanced to find among a friend's papers a large stack of Texas letters with much information on the events of Texas history from 1819-1852.... Unembellished pictures of the journey to Texas, personal incidents, and facts and events in Texas development." Graff 1073: "Only 250 copies were printed.... Buffalo hunting, the general countryside, history, etc." Howes D299. Rader 1131. Raines, p. 67. Dewees (1799-1878), one of Austin's Old Three Hundred, first visited Texas in 1819 during a keelboat excursion up the Red River and served as a public official in Colorado County during the Republic era and early statehood. "In the early 1850s he covertly collaborated with writer Emmaretta Cara Kimball Crawford [New Handbook II:394-95] in producing a journal of his pioneering experiences that purported to be a compilation of his letters [1819-1852] to a Kentucky resident named Cara Cardelle" (New Handbook II:615). Included are primary letters and documents relating to the Revolution and Republic (Travis' letter from the Alamo, Declaration of Independence, etc.).
($250-500)


Item 51 

 

51. DIENST, Alex. The Navy of the Republic of Texas, 1835-1845. Temple: Privately printed, [1909]. [10, title & preface] 1-38 [2, blank] 39-150 [4, blank] [9, index] [1, blank] pp. (the free endpapers are sewn into the first and last signatures of the book; the title-page is tipped in; apparently, the binder removed the blank conjugate leaf before binding the book in the special morocco binding). 8vo, original maroon morocco. Minor shelf wear, endsheets browned, otherwise a very fine, complete copy (despite the arcane collation). Association copy, author's own copy, with Dienst's blind-stamp on front flyleaf, and his signed humorous inscription on blank leaf following page 38:

First edition, author's own unnumbered copy of the 20 copies specially bound in presentation morocco. Basic Texas Books 42: "This is the first, and still best, history of the Texas Navy in the Revolution and Republic.... The book edition is one of the great Texana rarities.... I estimate that about 50 copies were actually issued in all: 20 numbered copies in presentation morocco, and about 30 bound in cloth, circa 1940.... The text of the book is divided into eighteen chapters divided into two general parts—the navy of 1835-1839 and the navy of 1839-1846." Howes D339. Vandale 50. This is one of those excruciatingly rare pieces of vintage twentieth-century Texana. We trace only two copies being offered during the past thirty-five years: First, Jenkins offered a copy in his Catalogue 193 (Basic Texas Books, Item 65) at $2,250. It is difficult to ascertain from Jenkins' description if he was offering the original 1909 issue or the 1940 reissue (see next item); Jenkins' copy was bound in cloth and unsigned. Recently Ray Walton offered a copy at $2,500, apparently almost identical to the Dudley R. Dobie copy.
($1,200-2,400)

 


Item 52, "Alone but not deserted"

 

52. __________. [14] 1-38 [2, blank] 39-150 [13] pp., portrait, plate. 8vo, original maroon cloth. Very fine.

First edition, later issue (ca. 1940), with the added portrait of Dienst, appreciation leaf by Eugene C. Barker, and plate—one of approximately 30 copies issued thus. See Basic Texas Books 42. Barker comments in his appreciation: "[Dienst's book] is comprehensive and soundly based on a complete understanding of source material, and will always be a useful and authoritative study of the subject."
($400-800)

 

53. DIXON, Sam Houston & Louis Wiltz Kemp. The Heroes of San Jacinto. Houston: Anson Jones Press, 1932. xv [1] 462 pp., frontispiece portrait of Sam Houston, plates. 8vo, original red cloth. Ink inscription effaced from front flyleaf, occasional mild foxing (mostly adjacent to plates), generally very good in the rare d.j. (minor chipping).

First edition, limited edition (#625 of 1,033 copies, signed by authors). Agatha, p. 73. Basic Texas Books 43: "This is the best book to start any research on what has been called the sixteenth decisive battle in the history of the world.... In addition to bare biographical and statistical details, the work includes many contemporary letters, diary excerpts, etc." Howes D366.
($250-450)

 


Item 54

 

54. DOBIE, J. Frank. The Mustangs. Boston: Little, Brown, [1952]. xvii [1] 376 pp., colored frontispiece and illustrations by Charles Wilson. 8vo, original full pinto hide, gilt-lettered leather label, t.e.g. A mint copy in publisher's slipcase and original mailing box.

First edition, limited edition, the Pinto edition (#12 of 100 copies, signed by author and illustrator, bound in full pinto hide, and with original drawing by Wilson and signed limitation leaf bound in after title). Adams, Herd 696. Dobie & Dykes, 44 & 44 66: "Rated by many as the best of Dobie's books." Dykes, My Dobie Collection, p. 7 (#4 on the rarities list): "The Pinto Edition of The Mustangs is the rarest [of Dobie's books]." Graff 1100. McVicker A14a(1). Reese, Six Score 33: "Certainly the best book on range horses, with much on cattle work."
($2,200-3,200)

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