Sold by Arader Galleries - AraderNYC, New York, NY, U.S.A.
AbeBooks Seller since December 2, 2005
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
8vo., (9 x 5 4/8 inches). Original sheep, morocco lettering-pieces on the spine ( head and foot of the spine a bit worn with loss; preserved in tan calf clamshell box. Provenance: Inscribed at the head of the title-page "Judge Hester, with the regards of Frederick Billings"; with the ownership inscription of "G.A. Huneter" dated January 1879 on the front paste-down; with the bookplate of James S. Copley on the front free endpaper, his sale, Sotheby's New York "Magnificent American, Historical Documents", 10th May 2011, lot 1059. First edition, and RARE. "Though one would not suspect that this rather thick volume of reports of law cases was at all rare, it is in fact a very rare book, as well as quite an important one. For many years before the publication of The Zamorano Eighty in 1945, I had been assembling a collection of Californiana, but it was only in January, 1957, that I was able to complete my holdings of The Zamorano Eighty by the purchase of this volume.-TWS." Judge Hoffman's work is an early source of information on land ownership in California from the Spanish and Mexican era. The "Reports of Land Cases" contains the decisions Hoffman made on appeals from the Board of Land Commissioners contains valuable information on nearly every major land grant bestowed by Spanish and Mexican governors. Hoffman records 110 cases, and an appendix listing 813 land claims filed with the Land Commission, and provides an important perspective on the Californios' struggle to hold on to their ranchos before courts with little knowledge or sympathy for Mexican law and customs. Hoffman as the first Judge of the U.S. District Court for the northern district of California, he presided over the most important decisions concerning land ownership in California history, including the celebrated case of José Y. Limantour case, in which the Frenchman fraudulently claimed 15,000 acres of the city of San Francisco and the islands of San Francisco Bay. Hoffman's opinion was published separately as a fifty-eight-page pamphlet in 1858. At the time of his death in 1891, Hoffman had served forty years on the bench and was acclaimed as one of California's greatest judges. From the legal library of Frederick Billings, who came to San Francisco in 1849 and with Henry W. Halleck and Archibald Peachy established the state's leading law firm; he later served as California's Attorney General, and built the Northern Pacific RR. Billings, Montana is named for him. Cowan II, p. 287; Graff 1919; Howes H569. Catalogued by Kate Hunter.
Seller Inventory # 72lib413
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