$12,300
Spectacle Island, Boston Harbor, Land Deed: 1684 and Hand Drawn Chart: 1703. Large handwritten deed on laid paper 30 April 1684, signed and sealed by four Native Americans: Josiah (sometimes called Charles Josiah Wompatuck), son of Josiah also called Wompatuck, late Sachem of the Massachusetts Country; William Ahoton Senior; William Ahoton Junior; and Robert Mamentaug; selling the island for "a valuable consideration of money" to Samuel Bill (c. 1654-1705) a butcher of Boston; the Indian signatures witnessed by William Stoughton; the original document signed by George Minott and Experience Fisher; the sheet toned, with marginal chips, spotting, professional repairs along splitting folds and holes on verso, 18 3/4 x 12 3/4 in. [Together with] Manuscript map of Spectacle Island, in pencil and brown ink on laid paper, with a compass rose, a scale of sixty poles or rods, and a hand-drawn cartouche citing Samuel Bill as the owner, dated 1703; with trees drawn on both parts of the island, and two buildings on the northernmost portion of the island: a house and a barn; with a note stating that the whole island is thirty-eight acres; the chart made up of three sheets of paper pasted together, staining, spotting, fragmentary along folds, chipped; splits along folds archivally repaired on verso, remnants of sealing wax on verso, 18 1/4 x 13 1/2 in.
Auctioneer:
Skinner
Date:
2015-11-15
