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Oliver Cromwell Applegate

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Autographs Start Price:NA Estimated At:3,000.00 - 4,000.00 USD
Oliver Cromwell Applegate

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Auction Date:2017 Oct 11 @ 18:00 (UTC-5 : EST/CDT)
Location:236 Commercial St., Suite 100, Boston, Massachusetts, 02109, United States
ALS - Autograph Letter Signed
ANS - Autograph Note Signed
AQS - Autograph Quotation Signed
AMQS - Autograph Musical Quotation Signed
DS - Document Signed
FDC - First Day Cover
Inscribed - “Personalized”
ISP - Inscribed Signed Photograph
LS - Letter Signed
SP - Signed Photograph
TLS - Typed Letter Signed
American politician and Indian agent in the state of Oregon (1845–1938) who was a member of the family that helped open the Applegate Trail. ALS signed “O. C. Applegate,” two pages both sides, 7.75 x 9.75, May 25–June 1, 1862. Letter to his cousin Harriet Applegate, written from the "Siskiyou Mountains," embellished with over thirty miniature drawings and poems. The cousins exchanged unique hand-illustrated letters decorated with “paintings” that delighted each other and other readers. This way of corresponding through “‘sketchicism’ and ‘emaginatinism,’” as Applegate called it, was unconventional to say the least. At the close of his letter, he writes, “I have you will discover attempted some illustrations—if they are not according to the rules to be followed in letter writing, you will of course excuse both me and them.” Applegate scatters over thirty minutely detailed drawings of figures and vignettes throughout the text of his four handwritten pages. His drawings include human figures like Indians, settlers, tumblers, and messengers, but also many animals like whales, owls, bulls, and bees.

Applegate’s tiny drawings are interspersed throughout content of similar high quality. He mentions wild animals that miners, frontiersmen, and other hunters encounter on a regular basis, including deer, bear, wolves, and salmon. Applegate observes: “Two weeks since Bear were plenty at the Salt Spring Valley 1 mile east from here, and the boys made a few hunts in that direction, and although one evening they saw five or six, they only succeeded in ‘bagging’ one black one. They were out again today and report many ‘Bars’ in the range.” Applegate was possibly employing backwoods hyperbole when he describes a twelve-foot-long black wolf that was recently spotted in the forest, or an abundance of deer that enabled two deer to be killed with one bullet.

Applegate discusses at length the environment, which continues to be explored: “Yet there will probably be a way explored direct from this part of the country as soon as the snow and mud will permit, and we will then be a hundred miles nearer to the famous [drawing of whale scavenged by men with pickaxes] then even the Portlanders themselves.” He also mentions plants and seeds that he tried to cultivate as gifts or even for export to the East Coast.

Democracy flourishes even in the wilderness, Applegate explains: “Polatics: Tomorrow is the day of the election. May every patriotic voter be at his post, and may the ‘coon hunting arosticracy’ be absent ‘frum hum’ in one of their favorite excursions." Two patriotic poems, studies of soldiers and admirals, and an incredibly detailed drawing of Applegate’s mountain homestead illustrate the end of his letter: “I have here attempted a hasty pen & ink sketch of the Toll House + vacinaty but it don’t suit me—The New House (A) is twice as big as it should be so as to be in proportion with the Toll House (B) and the Barn (C) is too low.” In fine condition.