Baker …Relevant?
Gen Abraham Gardiner pledges to the crown under duress Sept 7 1776
https:// issuu.com/blanchardsauctionservice/docs/catalogue_for_flipbook
Declaration of Independence on auction Oct 2017
https:// mobile.nytimes.com/2017/10/05/arts/design/declaration-of-independence-holt-broadside-auction.html?referer=
The unnamed auction consignor’s ancestors were members of the Gardiner, Mulford and Buell families. In addition to the Declaration text, Blanchard’s has gathered about 75 of the families’ documents into another auction lot (estimated to sell for $25,000 to $50,000).
Written by farmers, ministers, whalers and housewives between the 1660s and 1810s, the pages record infant deaths and Revolutionary troop movements as well as mundane land and livestock transactions. There are also bookplates printed by Paul Revere for Gardiner patriarchs, as well as references to the family’s connections to Aaron Isaacs, a German Jewish immigrant who settled in East Hampton and was widely praised for converting to Christianity.
Keith Arbour, a historian in Cambridge, Mass., who authenticated the documents for Blanchard’s and wrote the auction catalog entries, said the rediscovered collection contains many mysteries for scholars to solve, in particular what happened to the families’ enslaved people, including Gree, Judah, Zel and Tobe.
Mr. Arbour wonders especially about Tobe, he said. The documents suggest that in the 1780s, the enslaved teenager escaped from the Gardiners, and they sent agents to track him down. After that, there is apparently no mention of him.