Turner Auctions + Appraisals is pleased to present Books & Ephemera, including Historical Documents from the Chapman Family of Connecticut, on August 20, 2022, at 10:30 am PDT. Featuring over 220 lots from the 17th to the 20th centuries, the auction includes antique and vintage books on many subjects and in diverse languages. There is also a wide selection of works on paper – engravings, vintage photographs; maps; war posters, lithographs, and several artworks. Historical documents from the Chapman family are part of a collection related to Edward Mortimer Chapman (1862-1952), a Connecticut pastor, academic, author, and descendant of one of Saybrook’s first settlers.
Books from the 17th-19th centuries are written in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, and Latin. There are a wide range of topics: art, history, literature, plays, poems, illustrations, European cities and travel, Russia, opinions, and more. Among the multi-volume groupings are those by Voltaire, Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott, Charles Darwin, and J. F. Ducis. From the 20th century are books on Americana, architecture, posters, children’s and youths’ books, fables, English churches, and more. Notable fiction authors include Tom Wolfe, William Faulkner, and Ayn Rand.
Works on paper include “Dennis the Menace” original art; antique engravings; maps of arrondissements in Paris, and U.S. railroads and townships; vintage and panoramic photographs; patriotic World War I and II posters, and lithographs by Lucien Hector Jonas; an 1823 letter from British actor John P. Kemble; four illuminated Tafsir al-Qur'an manuscript paper leaves; Indian miniatures; and signed photos of Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Coleman. Rounding out the sale are ocean liner ephemera of the mid-20th century, including from Cunard/Queen Mary and United States Lines, and WWI-era newspaper flonges (molds).
An important part of this auction features the historical documents, papers and ephemera of Edward Mortimer Chapman and his family. Born in 1862, Chapman graduated from Yale Divinity School in 1890 and served as pastor of Old Lyme Congregational Church from 1906 to 1915. Chapman’s written works integrated his wide-ranging theological, literary, and historical interests. A descendant of Robert Chapman, one of the first settlers of Saybrook, Connecticut (c. 1635), Edward Chapman was an avid chronicler of history of his family and the area.
The Chapman-family’s offerings, many from the 18th century, include letters, land grants and sales, deeds, ledgers, opalotype milk glass portraits and miniatures, silhouettes, tintypes, photographs. Among the highlights are various letters from Woodrow Wilson, with whom Chapman had a personal acquaintance, through the Old Lyme Church and time spent in the Old Lyme art colony. Chapman corresponded with Wilson and his family, both when Wilson was president of Princeton University, and then during his U.S. presidency. Along with Woodrow Wilson, Chapman's correspondents included senators, clergymen at various institutions (many being friends from Yale Divinity), editors and reviewers, fellow antiquarians, and family members.
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