A Signed Photograph Presentation from the Last Survivor of the Battle of Bunker Hill

Only a handful are known to have survived, the last reaching the market in 2016

On June 17, 1775, the British army under General William Howe, supported by Royal Navy warships, attacked the defenses the colonists had erected on Bunker and Breeds Hills. The British troops moved up Breeds Hill in perfect battle formations. Patriot leader William Prescott allegedly encouraged his men “not fire until you see the whites of their eyes.” Two assaults on the colonial positions were repulsed with significant British casualties; the third and final attack carried the position after the defenders ran out of ammunition. The colonists retreated to Cambridge over Bunker Hill, leaving the British in control of Charlestown but still besieged in Boston. The battle was a tactical victory for the British because they held the ground, but it proved to be a sobering experience, involving more than twice the casualties than the Americans had incurred, including many officers. The battle had demonstrated that inexperienced Continental militia could stand up to regular British army troops in battle, at a time when the British were considered to have the finest army in the world. It encouraged revolutionaries throughout America, and made the success of such a revolution actually seem possible.

Ralph Farnham was a Maine farmer who, in 1860, identified himself as the oldest living survivor of the Battle of Bunker Hill. This item was made to benefit him as his yearly pension “upon which he is dependent for support” was only $61.66. This separately printed handbill is considerably rarer than the 1864 book The Last Men of the Revolution which contained six portrait photographs.

Photograph Signed (“Ralph Farnham”), 1860, salt print, oval, on printed presentation sheet, being a head and shoulders portrait of Farnham.