Being a full and true Account of the taking of the City of Louisbourg, by the New England Forces under the Command of the Gallant General Pepperell, on the 17th of June, 1745

musical broadside with illustration on watermarked paper, inscribed at bottom “Jonathan Livermore His Verses” and again on verso “Jonathan Livermore His Verses May 1746”, sold at the Heart and Crown in Cornhill, Boston, 1745, 12-1/4 x 8-1/4 in. 

Provenance: Christie’s, New York, Fine Printed Books and Manuscripts Including Americana, June 15, 2017, lot. 214 (accompanied by copy of receipt for $12,500); Private New England Collection

Note: The Siege of Louisbourg took place in 1745 when a New England colonial force aided by a British fleet captured Louisbourg, the capital of the French province of Île-Royale (present-day Cape Breton Island) during the War of the Austrian Succession, known as King George's War in the British colonies.

“New England Bravery” was printed by Thomas Fleet, whose home and family printing enterprise was located at “the Heart and Crown in Cornhill, Boston” from 1731 until 1764. Fleet was born in England and established himself as a printer in Boston about 1712. In 1732, he began publishing a newspaper called The Weekly Rehearsal, which in 1735 became The Boston Evening Post. Isaiah Thomas, a Boston printer and early historian of printing in America, praised the quality of Fleet’s work and added an interesting note to his sketch of Fleet in his The History of Printing in America. According to Thomas, Fleet employed slaves in his printing shop, including a talented African American printer, later identified as Peter Fleet, who cut the woodblock engravings for “all the pictures which decorated the ballads and small books of his master.” It is very likely, then, that an early African American artist illustrated New England Bravery. It is also highly important as one of the first American broadsides concerning a major event to bear an illustration. 

A similar, though uninscribed, copy resides in the collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society:

https://www.masshist.org/database/viewer.php?item_id=2520&pid=3