Charlemagne

1890 · E29832 — Philadelphia: Privately printed for The Historical Society of Pennsylvania 1890. Leather_bound. Fine. Oversized hardcover in pebbled black full leather with spine lettered in gilt. Top edge gilt and fore edge uncut. Frontispiece portrait of Charlemagne Tower title page printed in red and black. 298 pp. A supurb copy fresh bright and tight. This copy has an engraved extra page presentation page from the Society to a recipient tipped in at the third front blank. Charlemagne Tower 1809-1889 a captain in the Civil War veteran and a prominent lawyer and businessman operating in Pennsylvania's Schuylkill Valley in the coal and railroad industries. He also acquired large tracts of land in the upper midwest and Northwest when the Union Pacific railroad sold off portions of its real estate holdings and is credited with the founding of the mining industry in Minnesota. Tower was also a noted collector of rare and valuable books with a particular interest in American colonial laws. At the time of his death in 1889 his was the largest such collection in the world and was given to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania by his heirs. Privately printed for The Historical Society of Pennsylvania unknown