July 14th, 2011
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 7/14/2011
Three Lincoln images from the “Collection of Americana Frederick H. Meserve New York City” as marked on the verso, includes numbers 31, 93, and 103, each measures 2-1/8”x3-1/4”. Fine condition. Frederick Hill Meserve (November 1, 1865 - June 25, 1962), businessman and collector of historical photographs and Lincolniana. Meserve's interest in old photographs began while he was collecting illustrations for a manuscript of his father's Civil War diary. Using income from his business ventures, he became a zealot in collecting photographs and negatives from the period 1850-1900, especially photographs of Lincoln. The collection eventually contained more than 200,000 pieces. The extensive collection of Lincoln photographs was used by Jules Roiné during his work on the Lincoln Centennial Medal and by Victor Brenner, the designer of the head on the Lincoln penny. In 1911 Meserve had a book entitled Photographs of Abraham Lincoln privately printed. In 1917 four sets of a twenty-eight-volume work, Historical Photographs, were produced; two more sets were made in 1944. The six extant sets of this work contain several hundred otherwise unpublished photographs of figures from government, education, and entertainment of the last half of the nineteenth century. Carl Sandburg assisted Meserve in the publication of The Photographs of Abraham Lincoln (1941). Through his activity as a collector, Meserve discovered several "lost" photographs of Lincoln and preserved thousands of photographs of public figures that provide a visual record of a segment of American life in the nineteenth century. This collection was generously made available both to professional historians and interested nonspecialists.
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