Rare Book Monthly
Oregon Trail</i> Part II Finding Gems Along the Trail
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Our next entry is more interesting. It’s George L. Curry’s 1857 Correspondence, Resolutions and Memorials, of the Oregon Legislative Assembly, Relative to the Hostilities of the Indians, and Protection of the Immigrants in 1854. Eberstadt states “In no other contemporary volume do we find so large a body of accurate eye-witness material on the campaigns, depredations and massacres along the Oregon Trail.” And this one is rare. As Eberstadt points out, this title is “not in Smith, Wagner, Sabin, Auction records, et al.” To that we can Abebooks. Not there either. The only other reference to it comes from Howes, who tells us virtually nothing other than he rates it a “b.” Not as valuable, in his estimation, as Parkman or Palmer, but as best we can tell, even rarer. This is a title ideally suited for the new “Wants List” Software being introduced by the Americana Exchange.
Here’s an amazing item I don’t expect to find. A bound collection of letters from 1849-1854 from George and Lisbon Applegate sent back home covering their journey to California and experiences once they arrived. Offered for sale for $950 in 1950, I wonder where these are today. Just in case, I search for these two writers on Abebooks.com. Nothing shows up for Lisbon, and for George only The Complete Guide to Dowsing. This is surely not the same George Applegate, unless he lived to be two hundred. Still, the earlier George probably could have used his namesake’s dowsing guide while crossing the deserts of western Utah and Nevada.
I then search for the Applegate Brothers on the AED “Keyword Search.” Each reveals one additional entry. For Lisbon, there’s an 1847 letter received in Missouri from his brother Lindsay in Oregon. Is this the same Lisbon? Considering that “Lisbon” is not a very common name this side of Portugal, and that he traveled west two years later, I imagine they are the same. The entry for George is much later. It’s a letter concerning mine samples written in 1875 to one Jefferson Wilcoxson, a California businessman. George’s letter comes from Colfax, California, but other letters (not from George) in the collection come from Applegate, California, named for George’s family. This lot was sold just last year by the PBA Galleries. Same George Applegate? Not certain, but seems to be a very good chance. I can’t help but wonder whether the owner of the large collection of letters is aware of these other items related to the Applegate Brothers.
Next we have an absolute gem. It’s an Oregon Trail book printed in 1821. How so early? It was written about the author’s overland journey to Fort Astoria on the Oregon coast undertaken in 1811-12. The book is in French and was printed in Paris, despite the very un-French sounding name of the author, Wilson P. Hunt. We find this listing from an old catalog of the William Holliday collection, sold by Parke-Bernet in 1954. On further investigation we discover from Peter Decker’s catalog of the Soliday collection that this is one of the most important books relating to the discovery of South Pass, a critical pass through the Rockies on the way to Oregon. It is also “extremely rare.”
