PORTRAIT AND BIOGRAPHICAL ALBUM OF HENRY COUNTY, IOWA, CONTAINING FULL PAGE PORTRAITS AND BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF PROMINENT AND REPRESENTATIVE CITIZENS OF THE COUNTY, TOGETHER WITH PORTRAITS AND BIOGRAPHIES OF ALL THE GOVERNORS OF IOWA, AND OF THE PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES

Chicago: Acme Publishing Company, 1888.. [10],19-156,[10],169-266,[4],269-694pp., including scores of full-page portraits and plates. Quarto. Original publisher's morocco, stamped in gilt and blind, spine gilt, a.e.g. Boards and spine a bit sunned, hinges neatly reinforced. Very clean and bright internally. Near fine. An attractive copy of this history of Henry County, located in southeastern Iowa. It includes detailed biographical sketches and illustrative portraits of Henry County inhabitants of the time, as well as plates of the Henry County countryside including prosperous farms and residences of some of the people profiled. A number of the plates contain views of the county seat in Mount Pleasant, as well as a tinted double-page view of the Iowa Hospital for the Insane, located in Mount Pleasant at the time. The local biographies and portraits are rounded out with biographies and portraits of all the Presidents to 1888, from George Washington to Grover Cleveland, as well as all of the governors of Iowa to 1888. To capture the stories and faces of the people in late 19th- century Henry County, the publisher, "instead of going to musty records," sent their "corps of writers...to the people, the men and women who have, by their enterprise and industry, brought the county to a rank second to none among those comprising [Iowa]." The work is well represented in institutional holdings, but scarce in the market, with no copies in Rare Book Hub since Ernest Wessen offered a copy in 1961.