Peter Stuyvesant's Copy
The History of the Province of New-York, from the First Discovery to the Year M.DCC.XXXII.
London: Thomas Wilcox, 1757.
Price: $4,500.00
About the item
First edition of the first history of New York. Folding engraved frontispiece view of Oswego on Lake Ontario. xii, 255, [1]pp. 4to. Peter Stuyvesant's Copy. Modern calf. Repaired tear to the folding plate. Howes S703; Sabin 84566; Streeter Sale 871; Church 1023; Larned 1109.
Item #323571
This example signed multiple times by Petrus "Peter" Stuyvesant (October 13, 1727 – October 7, 1805), a New York landowner and merchant who was the great-grandson of his namesake, Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch Director-General of New Amsterdam
William Smith (1727-1793) was a Yale graduate, “the foremost attorney in New York during the first half of the eighteenth century” (ODNB). This book, drawing upon the works of Charlevoix and Colden's History of the Five Indian Nations, is the first history of New York and covers the period up to the year 1736. Smith married into the Livingston family and was a Loyalist during the Revolution, and was later appointed chief justic in Quebec. He wrote a continuation of the history of New York that was preserved in manuscript and ultimately published by the New-York Historical Society in 1826.
