Kit Carson: The Happy Warrior of the Old West.

VESTAL, Stanley.

$350.00

Item Number: 145968

Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1928.

First edition of this biography of a frontier legend; from the library of Philemon Tecumseh Sherman. Octavo, original maroon cloth, cartographic endpapers, top stain brown, frontispiece portrait of Kit Carson. P. T. Sherman’s bookplate to the front flyleaf beneath his ownership signature. In very good condition with light bumping to the crown and foot of the spine. General William Tecumseh Sherman’s son P. T. Sherman was a lawyer in New York, specializing in labor and insurance, and was elected a member of the New York Board of Alderman in the late 1880s. In the early 1900s, he was appointed the New York Commissioner of Labor. He transferred his library to his niece, Eleanor Sherman Fitch, the granddaughter of General Sherman through his eldest daughter, Maria “Minnie” Ewing Sherman Fitch, before he died. Until now, this book was held at the family estate in Washington County, Pennsylvania.

Christopher Houston Carson was an American a fur trapper, wilderness guide, Indian agent and U.S. Army officer. Having fought bravely in both the Mexican-American War and the American Civil War, Kit Carson became a legendary symbol of America's frontier experience, which influenced twentieth century erection of statues and monuments, public events and celebrations, imagery by Hollywood, and the naming of geographical places. Although he was famous for much of his life for his fearlessness and skillful combat, historians in later years have written that Kit Carson did not like, want, or even fully understand the fame that he experienced during his life.