The lost mansion on an Ohio River island, and Aaron Burr’s controversial expedition

Alvaro Franklin Gibbens framed his book as a centenary: the title page calls it the story of “an expedition against Spain one hundred years ago”. The expedition was Aaron Burr’s, and the place bound up with it was Blennerhassett Island in the Ohio River near Parkersburg, home of Harman and Margaret Blennerhassett and their mansion.

Beside the history, which also gives accounts of Burr’s life and follows the island’s later owners, the book is full of pictures: portraits, reconstructions of how the mansion looked, views of the island, and prehistoric pottery, a stone pipe and other finds from the area. It enlarges a shorter printing of 1899, and was printed in Parkersburg by the Globe Printing & Binding Co.

This copy went to the Library of Congress, whose stamp dates it 18 October 1906, the year it came out, and it was rebound with the library’s eagle-seal patterned endpapers in black boards with a burgundy cloth spine; the original covers are gone. The edges and corners are rubbed and a little frayed, the paper is age-toned, and the illustrated plates are there; it has not been checked page by page.