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HARRISON, William Henry (1773-1841). Partly printed document signed (“W. H. Harrison”), AS PRESIDENT, Washington ca. March 1841. Counter-signed by Secretary of State Daniel Webster. 1 page, folio, paper Great Seal of the United States, with New Bedford notarial seal. Matted and framed. A four-language ship’s paper (French, Spanish, English, Dutch), for the whaling ship Hydaspe, bound for the Pacific Ocean, bearing “provisions, stores and utensils for a whaling voyage.”
THE GREATEST OF PRESIDENTIAL RARITIES, A DOCUMENT SIGNED BY HARRISON IN OFFICE and the only one known to exist on a passport for a whaling ship. The Hydaspe embarked from the whaling port of New Bedford, Massachusetts on 20 April, and the ship’s particulars are filled-in as of that date. Harrison was dead two weeks by that point, but new Customs forms bearing the new President’s signature had not yet arrived in the port. Harrison, as was customary of all Presidents, signed these forms in blank (counter-signed by the Secretary of State) to be distributed to the various port cities to be accomplished by the local Customs officer. Harrison took the oath of office on 4 March in a driving rain, but the illness that soon befell him was likely not related to the inclement weather of his inauguration but to the polluted waters of the Potomac from which he took his drinking water. A fine example of this rarest of all Presidential signatures.
THE GREATEST OF PRESIDENTIAL RARITIES, A DOCUMENT SIGNED BY HARRISON IN OFFICE and the only one known to exist on a passport for a whaling ship. The Hydaspe embarked from the whaling port of New Bedford, Massachusetts on 20 April, and the ship’s particulars are filled-in as of that date. Harrison was dead two weeks by that point, but new Customs forms bearing the new President’s signature had not yet arrived in the port. Harrison, as was customary of all Presidents, signed these forms in blank (counter-signed by the Secretary of State) to be distributed to the various port cities to be accomplished by the local Customs officer. Harrison took the oath of office on 4 March in a driving rain, but the illness that soon befell him was likely not related to the inclement weather of his inauguration but to the polluted waters of the Potomac from which he took his drinking water. A fine example of this rarest of all Presidential signatures.