eBay Tuesday: New London From The Shore Road Engraving

A visitor coming from 1854 to Pequot Ave. would find a great deal of change to the modern day Thames River shoreline, but if an illustration and article from a contemporary magazine is any indication there would also be plenty of recognizable features.

This week's featured item is a woodcut engraving from Gleason's Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion, with illustrations accompanying an article on New London and other points along the Connecticut coast. The piece is offered by Jim and Rita Green of Bellingham, Wash. Jim says they've been selling antique prints for 12 years and that he the history of the prints is what keeps them interesting.

The article covers some of the sights along the Connecticut shore road, tracing a meandering route through New London, Old Saybrook, and Lyme. The woodcut occupying most of the page shows coaches and a team of oxen traveling along the Thames River with Fort Trumbull, the spires of the First Congregational Church and St. James Episcopal Church, and the monument at Fort Griswold all visible. The article also notes the whaling fleet and includes a facsimilie of what is purportedly the oldest grave in the state, the 1662 tombstone of Capt. E. Robert Lord in the Ye Antientist Burial Ground.

"The scenery of New London rivals its historical associations in fame and interest," the article begins.

The view in the woodcut was made along the road leading to the Pequot House, which had opened in the summer before the article was published. The hotel would remain a centerpiece of the Pequot Colony village of summer homes until it burned down in 1908. Fort Trumbull in 1854 was vacant, kept up by a sergeant after the fort's garrison departed for California in October of 1853; the site would be brought back to life during the Civil War as the headquarters of the 14th Infantry Regiment.

As for Gleason's Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion, this was established in 1851 by Frederick Gleason with Maturin Murray Ballou as editor as the United States' first pictorial weekly. The most notable contributing artist to the publication was Winslow Homer, and in fact the paper published Homer's first original work. The publication had some success, buying out the engravings of the short-lived New York competitor Illustrated News in 1853. Gleason later sold the paper to Ballou, whereupon it became Ballou's Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion. It lasted until the end of 1859, when financial difficulties from the Panic of 1857 and perhaps Ballou's decision to generally eschew articles on the tensions of the increasing divided nation doomed the publication.

The engraving is an original, with the uncut page showing some age toning and measuring 11 inches by 15 inches. It currently has one person watching the auction, which is scheduled to end at 3 a.m. on Wednesday. The starting price is $16.75, plus $6.35 for shipping.

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