(Fourth of July) A great satirical Broadside, “FOURTH JULY! – GRAND CELEBRATION!” [Connecticut, c. 1856], 485 x 290 mm. (19 3/8 x 11 1/2 in.).
A comical broadside ‘advertising’ a fictitious 4th of July celebration: “…A Procession will be formed at precisely some time after breakfast, in Shinbone Alley, the right resting on the Rope Walk, in the following order: Col. Gluepot, Chief Marshall…“, followed by Marshall’s Aids “Captain Brush” and “Jimmy Shankpainter.” Other members of the procession included a “…Jewish Sunday School… Brigham Young in a Transparent Crinoline… James Buchanan and Mother Bailey, on a gentle cow… THE YACHT REBECCA… a striking feature, in which J. Gordon Bennett, with long sweeps, will attempt to pull ahead of the rest of the procession…“. Post-procession events included a trek to “Skunk Cabbage Grove” to witness Mrs. Amandalina Reiley’s lecture, ‘The Affinity between the Potatoe Rot and the Growth of Brainless Young Dandies.’ After the lecture, an evening of fireworks promises “Four Fire Flies on the Marsh” and “The Northern Lights and the Moon having a fight.” The broadside concludes with an offer to the public from the New London and Stonington Rail Road Company to experience “…a Free Excursion over the whole length of the Extension Road… to give all who desire it an opportunity to take dinner with Mr. Langworthy.”
We haven’t discerned the exact target, but these broadsides tend to be political. Most satirical broadsides we encounter offer many more (obvious) clues than this one reveals. Mr. Langworthy may have been B. F. Langworthy, a Whig member of the Connecticut Assembly representing Stonington in the early 1850s.1 The route by which one could “take dinner with Mr. Langworthy” serves as a clue to the broadside’s date. By 1856, the New London and Stonington Railroad Company, organized in 1852, was becoming something of a local joke. Intended to complete the route between New York and Philadelphia, “The Extension Road“, as it was known, had yet to lay a tie or a rail. It merged with the New Haven and New London Railroad Company in 1856.2
Expected folds, creases, minor marginal chips and tears not affecting text, else very good.
(EXA 4545) SOLD.
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1 Norwich Courier, 12 April 1854, 2; Columbian Register (Hartford, Conn.), 6 May 1854, 2; Langworthy, also a deacon in Stonington, was charged with managing the purchase of the Mystic Bridge Company by Stonington and Groton: Richard Anson Wheeler, History of the town of Stonington… (1900), 121).
2 Wheeler, 153. Work finally commenced on the road in the summer of 1857. New London Daily Chronicle 11 July 1857, 2. Other clues to the date is the mention of J. Gordon Bennett, the newspaper editor was the target of a well-publicized libel suit during the early to mid 1850s and James Buchanan who was the Democratic Nominee in 1856.
