From Michael Pyron, Bookseller, ABAA, Conshohocken, PA, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
AbeBooks Seller since February 15, 2012
About this Item
Broadside. 14" x 3." Printed in blue on cream stock. Old folds; closed tear at one fold, but generally, quite a fresh copy of this advertisement. Near fine. Advertisement for one of several lotteries from 1871-1875 to serve as an endowment for the opening of the Public Library of Kentucky. These lotteries where thinly disguised as benefit concerts. The lottery to endow the library would, like so many other 19th century lottery schemes, be dogged by controversy. It was fraught, despite all the assurances in this advertisement of the distinguished gentlemen who will oversee it and even the means of the drawing: "A tag will be drawn by a blind child from the wheel containing the 100,00 numbers." Klotter writes in his article on Kentucky lotteries that this series raised more than $6M of which the library saw a percentage in the single digits (p. 414). The library would get off the ground and it's doors opened in 1873 only to close in 1875 After a few years and various ideas to make it solvent it was handed to the Polytechnic Society of Kentucky, a newly founded society to help fund the bankrupt library. An interesting piece of a fascinating history. Klotter, James C. "Two Centuries of the Lottery in Kentucky." Register of Kentucky Historical Society (Autumn 1989), 405-425. WPA. Libraries and Lotteries: A History of the Louisville Free Public Library (1944). Seller Inventory # 8426
Bibliographic Details
Title: [Broadside Advertisement] [Lottery] $550,000...
Publication Date: 1871
Binding: Broadside
Edition: 1st Edition
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