Blanchard, Rufus. Discovery and Conquests of the North-West, with the History of Chicago. Wheaton: R. Blanchard & Company, 1879. First Edition. [9509]
Full leather, front joint cracked with cover just barely attached by one cord, edges of binding rubbed, 9 1/4 x 6 1/2 inches, a clear wrapper has been attached to help keep the boards in place. 768 clean pp. with index, text block tight. 7 maps (2 colored, 1 bound in upside down) and 5 b/w plates. Fair.
Howes B508. The book we offer here most closely matches an 1881 edition in Howes, but our title & copyright pages both have 1879.
Rufus Blanchard (1821-1904), b. Lyndeborough, NH; d. Blanchard was at times a photographer, mapmaker, publisher, viewmaker, bookseller, historian, and publisher. He was active in Chicago in the second half of the nineteenth century. After studies at Ipswich Academy (in which he excelled in Latin and Mathematics) in 1835 when 14 years of age, he went to New York City to live with his brother Calvin, a bookseller at 78 Nassau Street. After living through the Great Fire of 1835 and the bank panic of 1836, Blanchard removed to the backwoods of Ohio, where he spent the next three years as a frontiersman, hunting and trapping. He returned to NYC and was in the employ of Harper & Brothers, after which his career in bookselling and publishing found him at various times in Lowell, MA, Cincinnati, OH, New Orleans, and at Chicago. He was established as a printer and publisher in Chicago by 1853, publishing some of the first railroad maps and street guides available at the time. After his establishments were destroyed by the Great Chicago Fire in 1871, he rebuilt and continued his publishing business.