Description:
A rare broadside by a remarkably talented 19th century Maine clergymanJonathan Fisher (1768-1847) served as the pastor of the Blue Hill Congregational Church in Maine for 41 years. He was very much a Maine Renaissance man of the first half of the nineteenth century: clergyman, author, poet, surveyor, inventor, artist (portrait and landscape painter), naturalist, teacher, wood engraver and farmer. Fisher is probably best known for his Scripture Animals, an 1834 work that "is a delightful synthesis of his theology, natural observations and skill as a wood engraver," as described in Sprague's The Mirror of Maine.
Fisher's broadside depicts and documents the hanging of Ebenezer Ball on October 13, 1811 for the murder of John Tileston Downes, who was attempting to arrest Ball on suspicion of counterfeiting. Ball, of Robbinston, was the first person hanged in Eastern Maine.
The broadside exists in two editions – the first, printed in late 1811 in a total of 400 copies, and this second – and… Read More
