Item #58120 The Love of Truth / Mark the Boy / [cut illustrating the famous story of George Washington and the cherry tree, featuring a boy with a hatchet and his well-dressed father at the tree in the middle of a lush garden, a large plantation house in the background, 5 x 10 inches] / [followed by 46 lines of rhymed couplets giving an account of the chopping down of the cherry tree by young George Washington].
The Love of Truth / Mark the Boy / [cut illustrating the famous story of George Washington and the cherry tree, featuring a boy with a hatchet and his well-dressed father at the tree in the middle of a lush garden, a large plantation house in the background, 5 x 10 inches] / [followed by 46 lines of rhymed couplets giving an account of the chopping down of the cherry tree by young George Washington].

The Love of Truth / Mark the Boy / [cut illustrating the famous story of George Washington and the cherry tree, featuring a boy with a hatchet and his well-dressed father at the tree in the middle of a lush garden, a large plantation house in the background, 5 x 10 inches] / [followed by 46 lines of rhymed couplets giving an account of the chopping down of the cherry tree by young George Washington].

NP [Germantown, PA?]: np [Germantown Print Works?], nd [ca. 1806]. Printed broadside, 11 3/4 x 11 1/2 inches, on muslin, the title illustration and text enclosed within an ornamental border. First line: "At six year old, George full of boyish tricks,"; last two lines: "My sudden anger and my grief are fled, / Although my lovely cherry-tree is dead." The Germantown printing and date given above are ascribed by Herbert Collins in his work Threads of History; other sources give a date of circa 1810 or the 1810s. American Imprints 20596 (New York Public). Collins Threads of History 39. Hummel More Virginia Broadsides 36 (photocopies, without publication attribution). OCLC locates six copies (Yale, Boston Athenaeum, Michigan State, Free Library of Philadelphia, Brown, New Jersey Historical Society). The American Antiquarian Society has several copies, printed in blue, black, or brown ink, some printed in tandem with a similar illustrated poem concerning Benjamin Franklin. Quite scarce in trade; no copy sold at auction for at least the past 35 years (ABPC, 1976-2010). Some fraying at the edges, some darkening, but a good example of a scarce early broadside on cloth, relating Parson Weems's famous cherry tree story. Housed in a custom cloth chemise, with printed paper label on upper board. (#5065). Item #58120

Price: $2,500.00

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