Description:

Fillmore Millard

Millard Fillmore Signed Music Book with "Uncle Tom's Cabin" Eva Association on the Eve of the Civil War

 

A beautifully bound music book signed by 13th U.S. President Millard Fillmore (1800-1874) in his second wife Caroline's name, as well as 4x signed by Caroline C. Fillmore (1813-1881) herself. Millard Fillmore's signature of his wife's name appears as "Caroline C. Fillmore", while Caroline's signature of her own name appears alternately as "Caroline C Fillmore" (1); "C C McIntosh" (1); and "C C McIntosh" (1); and one partial signature as "C.C. McInt--". One of these signatures is also inscribed "Book Bound in Buffalo. March 23, 1860", giving us an exact place and time when the book was produced. With other examples of Caroline's pencil inscriptions throughout, including piano finger markings. Deaccessioned from the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Library, the institution founded by Millard and Abigail Fillmore.

 

Hardcover, with quarter red leather spine and spandrels, and an inlaid red leather name panel at center gilt embossed "Caroline C. Fillmore." Also featuring dramatic blue, black, and red-veined marbleized covers that match the gorgeous endpapers. The gilt-embossed spine entitled "Music" bears an original library call number label from the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society. Expected wear to cover edges and corners. Scattered foxing, ghost printing impressions, and isolated closed tears, else very good to near fine. 10.25" x 13.375" x .875". Folio.

 

This book of antebellum sheet music contains some of Caroline's favorites for voice and piano. "Lilly Dale", "The Grave of Bonaparte", "Ossian's Serenade", "The Low Back'd Car", and "Call me pet names" are among the 30+ American and European published ballads, hymns, and popular melodies custom bound within the luxurious and vividly colored book. Some of the music sheets have been hand-stamped with Albany, New York and Washington, D.C. music sheet purveyors.

 

See below for a detailed description of where the signatures appear in the volume:

 

1. Millard Fillmore pencil signed "Caroline C. Fillmore" on the title page of "Will you come to my mountain home?", music by Francis H. Brown

 

2. Caroline Fillmore's partial pen signature, "C.C. McInt--" on the same page, cut off by the 1860 book binding

 

3. Caroline Fillmore pen signed, inscribed, and dated "Caroline C Fillmore; Book Bound In Buffalo. March 23, 1860" on the second page of the same sheet music

 

4. Caroline Fillmore pen signed "C C McIntosh" on the title page of "Uncle Tom's Lament for Eva", music composed by I.B. Woodbury. Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 Uncle Tom's Cabin, Or, Life Among the Lowly, galvanized abolitionist sentiment in the years leading up to the Civil War by its sympathetic depiction of enslaved characters Uncle Tom, Eliza, Harry, Topsy, and others, also by its treatment of the pious but tragically short-lived slaveholder's daughter Eva St. Clare.

 

5. Caroline Fillmore pen signed, inscribed, and dated "C C McIntosh. Albany - / 1841." on the title page of "The May Queen", composed by William R. Dempster

 

Before her marriage to ex-President Millard Fillmore in 1858, Caroline was married to Ezekiel C. McIntosh (1806-1855), an affluent Troy, New York businessman and railroad executive, between 1832 and his death in 1855.

 

When Caroline and Fillmore married, he had been out of the White House for five years, and had been widowed the same length of time (first wife Abigail Powers Fillmore had died just three weeks after Fillmore's presidential term ended.) The newly married Fillmores signed a pre-nuptial agreement to protect Caroline's fortune and later settled in Buffalo, where they ranked among the city's leading socialites and philanthropists.

 

From books in her personal library, we know that Caroline was interested in art, theater, music, literature, current events, politics, religion, manufacturing, sports, weather, humor, and human interest.

 

Books were also important to Caroline's second husband. Millard Fillmore had been a lover of books since boyhood.  By the time he reached adulthood, his library differed little from those found in families of wealth and education. Yet Fillmore was born into a poor family and became an indentured servant. His responsibilities, which ranged from farming, accounting, wood-cutting, and textile-making, prevented him from receiving a continuous education. So Fillmore educated himself. Motivated by a thirst for knowledge and a growing awareness of his comprehensive deficiencies, Fillmore read voraciously - using a dictionary to learn the meaning of words he didn't understand. Fillmore taught himself to read, and as he could not afford to buy books, sometimes he stole them.

 

Still obsessed with his education, he attended school in a nearby town, and his teacher, Abigail Powers, encouraged his studies. In time, she became the most influential and trusted person in his life. Abigail helped him learn with precision, and on subjects where they both lacked knowledge, they studied together. Fillmore realized when he later moved away that he had been "unconsciously stimulated by the companionship" of his teacher, but, too poor to visit Abigail Powers, they did not see each other for three years. In the interim, he apprenticed to a lawyer, began to teach professionally in the city of Buffalo, and was able to begin a law practice across the street from which he built a home to share with his new wife. When Millard Fillmore went to the state capital in Albany to serve a term in the state legislature, his wife stayed behind and began to purchase books of literature, poetry, and the classics to build upon his collection of law books at home, the core of what would become their personal library. Together, the Fillmores established a lending library and college in the city: the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Library.

 

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May 15, 2019 10:30 AM EDT
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