A set of pistols belonging to founding father Alexander Hamilton will be up for auction at Christie’s starting January 18 and could fetch a staggering $500,000.
The Flintlock pocket pistols, which were for personal use, are not the ones Hamilton used in his ill-fated 1804 duel with Aaron Burr, where he died from his wounds.
“They are small enough to fit one in each pocket, so they are sold in pairs,” said Martha Willoughby, a specialist in Christie’s Americana department.
“They’re great for close-range defense… if you’re attacked by a thief or something, that’s when they’ll come in handy.”
Hamilton, the founder of the New York Post, was a Revolutionary War officer and the nation’s first Secretary of the Treasury.
He lived in the Big Apple when he acquired the weapons, which are mounted in steel with an alloy of gold and copper on walnut.
Hamilton, the founder of the New York Post, was a Revolutionary War officer and the nation’s first Secretary of the Treasury. Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
They are engraved with Hamilton’s initials, “AH,” but it is not known whether he bought them himself or gave them as a gift.
“He was the most sought-after lawyer in New York, so he had a lot of business and a lot of French clients,” Willoughby explained. “He was connected to the upper echelon of political figures in [Marquis de] Lafayette to [Charles Maurice de] Talleyrand. This could well have been a diplomatic gift.”
The pistols are engraved with Hamilton’s initials. christian
Its lockplates are engraved with “Jalabert/Lamotte/St Etienne,” which represents French arms maker Jean-Louis Jalabert and his wife, Marie-Anne Lamotte, and the French town in which they resided. The weapons date to sometime between 1798 and 1804.
Willoughby explained that because of their small size, firearms have a high caliber, which refers to the width of their openings, and can hold relatively large bullets.
Christie’s acquired the pistols through the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which purchased them from Hamilton’s great-great-grandson, Schuyler Van Cortlandt Hamilton, in 1950. The items were on display at the museum from 1956 until the early 1970s.
They will be sold at a live auction at Christie’s Rockefeller Center downtown.
Another pair of pistols owned by Hamilton, which he carried during the Revolutionary War, sold at auction in 2021 for $1.15 million.
His most famous guns, those from his duel with Burr, were owned by Hamilton’s brother-in-law, John Barker Church, and were purchased by JPMorgan Chase, formerly The Manhattan Company, which Hamilton and Burr helped found, in 1930. They are now in the bank’s headquarters on Park Avenue, but they are not on public display.
Categories: Trending
Source: vtt.edu.vn