[Americana] [Green Bartholomew] Partially-Printed Massachusetts Tax Collector Broadside

(Boston: Bartholomew Green and John Allen), September 3, 1706. Partially-printed tax collector commission for Constable Thomas Prentis of Newtown, Massachusetts, stipulating that he will be required to "Collect all and every the Sums of Money, mentioned in the List or Lists of said Tax or Assessment of your Town", signed at bottom in ink by treasurer James Taylor. Some spotting; marginal separations along folds occasionally affecting text. 13 3/4 x 8 in. (349 x 203 mm). In frame. Not in Evans

The present document details a debt to be collected by the Town Constable, Captain Thomas Prentis, and then paid to the Treasurer, James Taylor, by the end of May 1707. Described as "one of the most colorful" figures in the first hundred years of European settlement in North America, Thomas Prentis had established himself as a military hero during King Philip's War. The request for taxes to be collected came in the midst of Queen Anne's War, the second in a series of French and Indian Wars fought in North America and involving the armies of England, France, and Spain.

Bartholomew Green was the eldest son of printer Samuel Green, who emigrated to North America from England ca. 1633. One of the first printers to operate in North America, Samuel Green printed the Eliot Indian Bible in 1663, the first translation of the Christian Bible into an indigenous language. Bartholomew would assist his father in printing the second edition in 1685. They were one of only around five printing presses operating in North America at the time.

Exceedingly rare. According to online records, only one copy has been offered in the past 80 years (Rosenbach, dealer catalogue, 1948: "Of the Utmost Rarity").

This lot is located in Chicago.

[Americana] [Green Bartholomew] Partially-Printed Massachusetts Tax Collector Broadside