1794 Letter on Norfolk Shipbuilding Fetches $9,500: The Letter Leading to Hampton Roads' Naval History Sells Along With Other Documents.
Posted on: Friday, 16 June 2006, 15:00 CDT
By Chris Flores, Daily Press, Newport News, Va.
Jun. 16--The Christie's auction house in New York fetched $9,500 on Wednesday for a historic 1794 letter ordering the first U.S. warships to be built in Norfolk.
Including the fee to Christie's, the unidentified buyer paid $11,400 for the document.
The letter from Gen. Henry Knox, the nation's first secretary of war, ordered the construction of the USS Chesapeake at the port of Norfolk.
The ship was the first built by the U.S. Navy at Norfolk Naval Shipyard and among the first six U.S. Navy ships authorized by Congress. Stanley L. Klos, a Carnegie, Pa., collector liquidating because of a divorce, sold a number of historic documents at the auction.
Big-ticket items at the auction overshadowed the Knox letter.
A draft of the Declaration of Independence sold for $200,000 - obliterating its estimated sales price of $100,000 to $150,000. An early printing of the U.S. Constitution fetched $160,000.
Two letters from George Washington sold for $16,000 and $17,000.
A letter from Thomas Jefferson went for $16,000, and a John Hancock letter sold for $11,000.
None of the buyers was identified.
The USS Chesapeake was the first U.S. Navy ship built at Gosport Navy Yard, later renamed Norfolk Naval Shipyard - the oldest existing federal shipbuilding yard anywhere.
More than two centuries later, Hampton Roads ranks as one of the most important naval and shipbuilding regions in the world.
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Source: Daily Press
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