[Gold Mining]. The Miner's Ten Commandments bifolium lettersheet featuring a letter from a California gold miner.

WELLAR, William Autograph letter signed ("Wm. Wellar"), to his mother, Rich Gulch, CA, 8 May 1854. 2pp., 4to, on bifolium featuring full-page lithograph "The Miner's Ten Commandments" with 11 vignettes, small losses at old creases, some toning, tape residue to folds.

The Miner's Ten Commandments. San Francisco: Sun Print, James M. Hutchings, 1853. Occupying a full page of the 4-page bifolium. It features 3 columns of text and ten vignettes illustrating the "ten commandments", after Harrison Eastman. Includes such wisdom as, "Thou shalt have no other claim than one," and "Thou shalt not tell any false tales about 'good diggings in the mountains' to thy neighbor." This stationery was printed and sold to the miners, and became one of the most popular pictorial sheets of the Gold Rush era.

The letter is written by a prospecting gold miner to his mother. He relays that one of the boys "that left Portersville with me...Christopher Williams...is no more in the land of the living, but is now numbered with the dead, he died...with the Small Pox...The Small Pox was on board the Uncle Sam on her trip up when we came..." He speaks of working the mines in Rich Gulch: "There are people here from all parts of the world, they are generally verry civil around here, there are a good man Mexican, they are the most troublesome..."

From the Collection of Jay N. Guerbr

This lot is located in Philadelphia.

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Printed Books & Early American Photography, including Selections from the Larry Ness Collection

[Gold Mining]. The Miner's Ten Commandments bifolium lettersheet featuring a letter from a California gold miner.

Printed Books & Early American Photography, including Selections from the Larry Ness Collection

[Gold Mining]. The Miner's Ten Commandments bifolium lettersheet featuring a letter from a California gold miner.

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