May 8-10, 2024 Firearms & Militaria
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 5/10/2024
Sleeved vest or waistcoat of white silk, collarless, turned over lapels, with 9-button front purportedly owned by Lafayette and left at the household of Gouverneur Morris, statesman, author of the preamble to the U.S. Constitution and signatory. Hand embroidered front panels with floral motifs in various shades of green and pink. All 9 embroidered cloth covered lapel buttons in place with good buttonholes. Cuffs fastened with 3 plain white silk covered buttons each. 1 shallow exterior pocket at lower front on either side. Belt adjusted at rear by small brass 2-prong buckle marked "A. D. & C." on frame bar reverse. CONDITION: Good. Staining to the interior, wear to the upper shoulders, upper back, and left armpit. Some losses to the narrow green borders edging the lapel and pockets. The floral motifs generally very good with good color. Paperwork includes letter of provenance indicating the vest was purchased by Pennsylvania and Maryland antique dealer Dora Mae Kane at a Morris family estate sale, passed to collector Viola Winchester, and thence to the Horse Soldier of Gettysburg prior to February 1986. Ms. Winchester indicated Lafayette had left behind a trunk with Gouverneur Morris. A New Yorker by birth, Morris had was a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1778 and lived in Philadelphia from 1779, serving as assistant superintendent of finance of the United States and as a Pennsylvania delegate to the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Meetings between the 2 men in America are thus possible until Lafayette's departure for France from Boston in December 1781 or during his return visit of 1784-85. The 2 men also met during Morris's time in France, but Morris died in 1816, before Lafayette's 1824 tour of the U.S. Ms. Winchester related a story that the two men had quarreled over Anna Lee (Anne Hill Carter,) future mother of Robert E. Lee, a likely apocryphal story since she was born in 1773.
Item Dimensions: 22" X 16"