News

Autograph book covering 45 years of presidents goes on auction block

Elizabeth Burrell holds her family’s autograph book open to the page containing the signatures of President Lincoln and First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln. [AMY MCCRAW/Hendersonville Lightning]

By Amy McCraw, Special to the Lightning, Published: August 17, 2024

The end of the Civil War was still more than a year away when Jerome B. Diver, a paymaster in Abraham Lincoln’s administration, found a way to get his new autograph book in front of the president and his wife.

No one knows how, but Diver persuaded both Lincoln and his wife, Mary, to sign the book’s first page. They both also inked in the date: Jan. 11, 1864.

The famous couple’s signatures no doubt took only moments to scribble on the page.

But the Lincolns' willingness to sign Diver’s autograph book set in motion a family tradition that produced a unique slice of history. The book features the signatures of most American presidents from Lincoln through Theodore Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt and his wife, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, signed the last page of the book on Feb. 24, 1909.

The book has been passed on from one generation to the next in Diver’s family over the decades until it ended up in the hands of Diver’s great-great-granddaughter, Hendersonville resident Elizabeth Burrell.

After spending the last 160 years in her family, the family heirloom is to be sold at auction next month in Boston, where it could fetch thousands of dollars.

 Burrell said she plans to use money from the book’s sale to help her children and grandchildren.

 “I am not that emotionally involved with it,” she said. “I respected my mom and my grandparents. They are gone. They set an example to not leave your kids penniless when you die. This is one way they can have more comfortable lives.”

‘This could be significant’

 

 The autograph book’s journey from Burrell’s home to the RR Auction Co. in Boston began when Burrell and her husband, Henderson County Attorney Russell Burrell, decided to sell their house in Flat Rock and move to Carolina Village.

They needed to downsize for the move and contacted Dave Pearce, whose business, 828 Clear Out, helps people sort out what to sell, what to keep and what to discard.

 Burrell mentioned to Pearce when he began clearing out her home that an old autograph book was in the basement.

 But it wasn’t until he spotted the book in a pile his son had made in the dark basement for throw-away items that Pearce realized he’d better take a closer look.

 “I saw it in the light and I said, ‘This could be significant,’” he said.

 Pearce then contacted his friend and sometimes business partner, Ben Dowling, to see if he knew anyone familiar with historic signatures. Dowling’s business, Flat Rock Estate Sales, occasionally helps sell items Pearce finds when clearing out homes.

 Dowling, who holds a bachelor’s degree in American Studies and taught high school history, knew he could help because of his background and the fact that he collects autographs himself.

 He was skeptical when Pearce told him on the way to a flea market about the autograph book because autographs people collected in books in those days were mostly of friends and family members, he said.

 “Autograph collecting was a brand-new hobby in the 1800s. They were more likely in those days to send a lock of hair,” he said.

Dowling’s skepticism turned to excitement and amazement when Pearce showed him the 100-page autograph book.

It included the signatures of eight of the 10 presidents who served in the White House from Lincoln to Teddy Roosevelt. The only missing presidential signatures were Andrew Johnson, who served as president after Lincoln’s assassination from 1865 to 1869, and Chester Arthur, who served from 1881 to 1885.

 The autograph book also includes the signatures of U.S. senators, congressmen, admirals, generals and other historic figures, including Ulysses S. Grant when he served as a lieutenant general in the Union Army. The signatures of Lincoln’s secretary of state, William Henry Seward, and his secretary of treasury, Salmon Chase, are also found in the book among other executive branch figures.

 While presidential signatures are relatively common, they’re usually clipped from a document. Having so many presidential autographs plus signatures of first ladies and other government officials in one book makes it unique, Dowling said.

 “This is rare. I’ve never handled anything with this many presidential signatures in it,” he said.

Book could fetch up to $40,000

 

 The years the book covers, from 1864 to 1909, were also a unique time in American history.

 “That is an interesting period because it’s America resetting after the Civil War,” Dowling said, noting that Roosevelt was born in 1858, three years before the Civil War began.

 Dowling and Pearce said they expect the book could fetch $10,000 to $40,000 at auction because it contains so many historical signatures in one place.

 Whatever dollar value is placed on the autograph book, Burrell said the process of getting it ready for auction gave her an invaluable chance to learn more about her family’s history.

 With a friend’s help, Burrell did some online research into her ancestry.

 She discovered that Diver, who was born in New York in 1835, worked as a paymaster in Lincoln’s administration during the Civil War.

 “His job was to travel around and pay soldiers,” she said.

 When Diver was not on the road paying the Union soldiers, he came home to Washington and often spent time in the White House.

Because the autograph book was always passed to female members of her family over the years, Burrell assumes that it was Diver’s wife, Lucy Henry Newland, who convinced her husband to first seek the signatures of President Lincoln and the First Lady.  

 Women in the family also carried on the tradition of seeking presidential signatures long after the autograph book ended.

 “His wife urged him into doing this. At least, there is no one alive who can contradict me,” she said with a chuckle.

Women carry on family hobby

 

 Diver was 73 when he died in Washington in 1909, the same year the Roosevelts signed the last page in the autograph book.

 Burrell said it is possible that some of her ancestors other than Diver obtained some of the later signatures in the autograph book.

 After Diver’s death and the Roosevelts’ signature ended the autograph book in 1909, women in the family continued the pursuit. Starting with President William Howard Taft (1921-1930), they obtained presidential signatures on note cards, photographs and loose pieces of paper.

 Richard Nixon was the only president who declined to send a signature.

 Burrell keeps the autographs, including a signed 8x10 photo of Jimmy Carter, in a box at her home.

 She first learned about her family’s tradition when she was in college.

 “I would see my mother writing letters to the White House,” she recalled.

 When Burrell asked her mother why she was writing the White House, her mother gave a simple answer.

 “I’m going to get the next president’s name,” her mother said before adding that that she expected her daughter to carry on the tradition one day.

 Burrell took over in the 1980s after her mother no longer had the energy to keep writing the White House.

 “It seemed to matter to her so much that I wanted to honor my mother by doing it,” Burrell said. “She was the kindest person I ever met.”

 Burrell said she eventually stopped seeking presidential signatures after learning that modern presidents often used automated equipment to produce facsimiles and no longer signed their own names.

 The photograph of Carter was likely the last autograph in her collection that a president actually signed, she said. Presidential autopen signatures were used by most presidents after Dwight D. Eisenhower, Dowling said.

 Burrell eventually boxed up the loose signatures along with the old autograph book and stored them in the basement where they stayed until Pearce and Dowling came along.

 The autograph book is scheduled to be auctioned in September.

 Regardless of the price it brings, Pearce said he was happy to play a role in getting the book out of a basement and in front of collectors.

 “This is so special and unusual that people need to see it,” he said.

-