History of the Province of New-York
Item #81510
SMITH, William. History of the Province of New-York, from the First Discover to the Year M.DCC.XXXII. To which is Annexed, a Description of the Country, with a Short Account of the Inhabitants, their Trade, Religious and Political State, and the Constitution of the Courts of Justice in that Colony. London: Printed for Thomas Wilcox, 1757. 1st ed. 4to. xii,255pp. plus folding double-page plate. Contemporary half calf and marbled boards, spine gilt with raised bands, fore-edge and bottom edge sprinkled red. Boards and extremities scuffed and worn, with some occasional loss to the original marbled paper, small split to joints at bottom end. Text lightly foxed with occasional marginal notes in faint pencil. Lower outer corner of leaf D2 torn, but not affecting text. Bookplate of Pringle Taylor to front pastedown (see below). Very good. SABIN 84566. HOWES S703, "b." STREETER SALE 871. CHURCH 1023. ESTC T36514. LARNED 1109. BRADFORD 5095. PILLING 3669. This is the first edition of the first history of New York, based largely on the works of Charlevoix and Colden's History of the Five Indian Nations. Smith also drew from the journals of the Assembly and the Legislative Council. He was a graduate of Yale who became a distinguished New York lawyer and eventually justice of the province. A Loyalist during the Revolution, Smith moved to Canada at the war's conclusion, and there became a chief justice. This history covers the period up to 1736. Smith wrote a continuation which remained in manuscript until it was published by the New-York Historical Society in 1826. "[T]he best history of the province of New York....This work ranks with Stith's Virginia and Hutchinson's Massachusetts, as one of the worthiest examples of historical literature produced in later colonial times" - Larned. Includes the engraved folding frontispiece plate, "The South View of Oswego on Lake Ontario," by J. Mynde, showing buildings and forts along the Onondaga River where it meets Lake Ontario. This copy bears the armorial bookplate of Pringle Taylor (1796-1884?) on the front pastedown. Pringle Taylor was the son of William Taylor, a lawyer from Middletown, New Jersey, who, like William Smith, was a Loyalist who withdrew to England during the American Revolution. There he received an appointment in the colonial government in Jamaica before eventually returning to New Jers.
Price: $5,500.00