4x6¾, leather covers gilt-stamped "Autographs."
Exceptional gathering of autographs from the Civil War period and after, featuring many prominent politicians, generals, two presidents, and a number of Episcopal bishops. With a letter of provenance, one-page, typed, signed in ink, dated 1983, stating "The autograph album which you have in your possession was put together by my grandfather Gershom Mott Williams, born February 11, 1857 in Detroit, Michigan. He was probably eleven or twelve years old when he began to collect autographs. His father was General Thomas Williams...who served in the Civil War and died of injuries received in the battle at Baton Rouge in 1862. It is not known exactly how young Gershom was able to procure these autographs but it seems probable that the young family remained in contact with his father's colleagues and that he was able to meet a number of well-known people..." With signatures (in order of appearance, some with inscriptions, all tipped-in) of Samuel F.B. Morse, inventor of the telegraph; Horace Greeley, newspaper editor; Brigham Young, Mormon leader; Salmon P. Chase, statesman, Lincoln’s Secretary of the Treasury, then chief justice of U.S. Supreme Court (with accompanying cdv portrait); J[oseph] E[ggleston] Johnston, Confederate general; Andrew Johnson, 17th President of the United States; William W. Belknap, Secretary of War under U.S. Grant; Hamilton Fish, statesman, Secretary of State under U.S. Grant; D[avid] Hunter, Union general, was president of military commission which tried Lincoln’s assassins; Millard Fillmore, 13th President of the United States; R[euben] E[aton] Fenton, lumberman, politician, governor and senator from New York; William H. Seward, Secretary of State under Lincoln, negotiated purchase of Alaska in 1867; John T[hompson] Hoffman, Tammany Hall politician, mayor of New York City, governor of New York State; Charles Sumner, U.S. Senator from Massachusetts from 1851 to 1874 (on First National Bank Check, 1868); Simon Cameron, businessman and politician, briefly Secretary of War under Lincoln; Schuyler Colfax, politician, served as speaker of the House, then vice-president of U.S., was ruined in Credit Mobilier scandal; W[illiam] T. Sherman, Civil War general, destroyed Georgia in march to sea; William Cullen Bryant, poet and editor; Ethelbert Talbot, Episcopal clergyman, bishop of Wyoming and Idaho, the central Pennsylvania; W.E. McLaren, Episcopal clergyman, bishop of Chicago; S[amuel] J[ones] Tilden, lawyer and politician, ousted Tweed, became governor of New York; and 13 more bishops. There are two illegible signatures.