2005-03
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 2/28/2005
Autograph Letter Signed, George Besore, 2p. quarto, Baltimore, September 27, 1833, with integral leaf addressed to his daughter in Pennsylvania, and reads in part: “…I will endeavour to inform you of some of the curiousity I have seen since my arrival in this City the first and Grandest of all was the asention of Mr. Durant in his balloon yesterday. But to describe it to you is impossible. Just imagine yourself to see a human being asending up into the air…there were about 50000 persons present such a crowd I never witnessed in all my life he took his seat in the car attached to the balloon at 5 oclk amid the shouts of the aujdience the firing of cannon & Band of music playing while he was going upward he kept waving his hat & the American colors until he was out of sight. He came to the ground 24 miles from the place at Bell Air, he sailed right over the city so that all the citizens could see him he then let drop a rabbit that he had taken up with him which land safe. Today about 11 oclk we had the largest fire here that ever I saw. There was a whole square of building burnt down. But they were principally small buildings with the exception of W & W Planing Establishment & Lumber yard..the loss will be great to Baltimore as it was the only establishment of the kind in the United States that planned off the boards & made them fit to lay on the floor…many thousand feet of board burnt and are still buring and it is now 9 oclk at night…” VG.
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