or giving me a call from 11am to 6pm central time
weekdays at
314-474-0101.There are approximately 35 bawdy broadsides in this ledger/scrapbook with two-thirds song related. The rest consist of doggerel poems, bawdy jokes & stories (see photos below). Using the dates found in the ledger itself, the broadsides date from ~1883-97. It was acquired via an intermediary, so I was not able to ask questions directly of the seller. Reportedly the ledger book was found in the attic of an 1880's house during renovations in a town in upstate NY near the Erie Canal.
This scrapbook starts off as a regular ledger book for the first 10 pages with dates from the late 1870's through 1883. After this, there are blank pages then the bawdy broadsides & manuscript entries begin. There are at least two examples of a handwritten bawdy poem/song and then a later printed broadside example of the same poem/song. After 35 pages of manuscript & broadsides the broadsides peter-out and it continues as just a ledger book with dates of 1898-1907. There is water damage to the entire ledgerbook with different varieties of black, green & pink mold on nearly every page with the worst of it in the last few pages. There are two broadsides that are currently illegible (see here & here) and they will need to be restored.
It is my theory that this ledger book is from the printer that published the broadsides because of the manuscript entries of later broadsides and because the last part of the book are ledger entries for regular print orders (e.g. letterhead). If you like, I can collate it so that you have a more definite figure on the number of broadsides. I would like to keep this scrapbook together as a collection and not have it broken up because of the relation of the manuscript entries to the broadsides.
You can reach me by sending an email to
or giving me a call from 11am to 6pm central time
weekdays at
314-474-0101.
Sincerely,
Jack Horntip
~
Below I have photographed every page that has a broadside. I proceed
by photographing an overall of the two pages then close-ups of the
individual broadsides on the pages.
