Each Day A New Beginning

Knox, Seymour H. Polo Tales and Other Tales, 1921-1971,vols 1-2; Other Tales in Other Years, New York Private c1972

3 volumes very rare; polo years with many photos by this distinguished player, signed by him and inscribed to world famous squash player William Treddy Ketcham who has signed his name to each of the copies on upper right corner of soft paper cover. Seymour H. Knox, Jr. (1898-1990) had a giant impact on his city and he was one of its wealthiest and most influential citizens for most of the twentieth century.The author was the only son of Seymour H. Knox, Sr., who partnered with Frank W. Woolworth in pioneering the 5-and-10-cent store. The senior Knox later established a chain of them, known as S. H. Knox & Company. When the chain merged into F. W. Woolworth & Company in 1912, Knox became vice president. A fellow Woolworth official, Elbert S. Bennett, lived at 110. With his great fortune, Knox moved into banking, but he died suddenly in 1915 at the age of 54. Seymour Jr. thus came into a vast inheritance at a very young age. He proved to be very adept financially; as a result of his skill, the family fortune grew tremendously. In addition to managing the family finances, he served as a director of numerous local and national companies. Most notably, he was the longtime chairman of Marine Midland Bank; during his tenure, he was the principal force behind the construction of the bank's new office tower. That structure, which straddles lower Main Street, is still Buffalo's tallest building. It now houses HSBC Bank, the international banking company that purchased Marine Midland. Though Knox excelled at business, modern art was his great passion. A. Conger Goodyear, who lived around the corner from Knox at 160 Bryant Street, sparked Knox's interest shortly after Seymour and Helen moved onto Oakland Place. Although Goodyear later moved to New York City and became the first president of the Museum of Modern Art, Knox's passion for modern art never waned. Knox purchased millions of dollars worth of art for the Albright Art Gallery over the years; his dedication and generosity were pivotal in making it into one of the nation's leading venues for modern art. He donated a new wing to the Gallery in 1962; when it was completed, the Gallery was renamed the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in recognition and appreciation of all he had done. Knox was also an enthusiastic sportsman and his skill made him one of the top polo players in the nation; he led his team to a national championship in 1932. He shared his passion for sports with his two sons and their enthusiasm resulted in the creation of the Buffalo Sabres, the city's team in the National Hockey League (NHL) The Knox family lived in great style. The family's fortune enabled them to enjoy luxuries such as a household staff even when servants were rare in other homes on Oakland Place. Just before the start of World War II, for example, 57 Oakland Place was home to eleven people, including servants. In addition to this grand mansion, the family enjoyed their residences in East Aurora, approximately 20 miles from Buffalo, and Aiken, South Carolina. Probably no individual has established a more visible persona in the squash world during the past 50 years than William Tredwell Ketcham. Affectionately known as Treddy, he has been President of both the New York MSRA(1959-61) and USSRA(1965-67); has served as American captain in the annual U.S.-Canada Lapham-Grant competition and Tournament Chairman for more than 35 years(and counting) of the Gold Racquets Invitational, hosted every year in Cedarhurst, Long Island during the first weekend in December; and is the donor of honorary cups at virtually every competitive level. His ever-present and energetic involvement have combined with a gregarious hail-fellow-well-met personality to make him one of the most beloved figures in the sport and a welcome fixture at every significant event. Born in New York City on August 2, 1919, Ketcham started playing squash at age 12 at the Rockaway Hunting Club(host site for the Gold Racquets) under the tutelage of two professionals, Leif Nordlie and later Johnny Smith, during his grade-school years at Lawrence Country Day School. He then followed his father and uncle to the Hill Prep School in suburban Philadelphia, whose team he played on, before attending Yale(also his dad's alma mater), where he rejoined two contemporaries from his Rockaway junior years, Worthy Adams and Ewing Philbin, as solid members of several Eli Intercollegiate Championship teams. After volunterring for military service several months after his graduation in 1941, he then spent five years in the Marine Corps, a time Treddy recalls with great fondness and respect, and the distinction and devotion with which he served during World War II culminated in his receiving the revered Navy Cross for heroism at Iwo Jima in 1945. After returning to the States, he completed the three-year program at Yale Law School and spent several years each first with the New York law firm of Davis Polk and then in France and London working for the government. This latter experience overseas landed him a prestigious post as Special Counsel of the IBM World Trade Americas Far East Corporation beginning in the mid-1950s(when he permanently returned to New York and began his squash career in earnest) and continuing until his retirement at age 65 in 1984. He died at age 86 (2006) at his home in Cedarhurst, Long Island. Ketcham was both a proud product and staunch advocate of a period in squash's evolution when camaraderie was more important than competition, when the amateur ethic was truly an honored doctrine and when great fulfillment was derived from giving something back to the game that gave one so much pleasure. It was out of respect for that (sadly) dated credo that he would donate the President's Cup "to that person who has made a substantial contribution to the game of squash racquets" while USSRA President; establish the MSRA counterpart to that honor, the Board of Governors Award, during his MSRA Presidency; present the WPSA Man Of The Year Award to North American squash's foremost professional organization in 1971; bestow a Junior Award for improvement and sportsmanship several years later; and initiate the Ketcham Cup as a doubles-oriented companion-piece to the longstanding New York-Philadelphia-Boston Lockett Cup Tri-City competition. Treddy Ketcham (upper left) with partner Newt Meade on his way to his seventh senior National Doubles Title. This latter contribution points up Treddy's well-known interest in doubles, which he feels entails a degree of strategy and teamwork that made the game more appealing to him than singles. It is worth noting in this context that Ketcham, far from being merely a vocal proponent of doubles, was a highly proficient practitioner of this discipline as well; in fact, during the decade-long period from 1965-74, he won the USSRA Senior(50-and-over)Doubles Championship seven times with four different partners(both all-time records in this age group), and the Eddie Standing Trophy "for sportsmanship combined with a high level of play" which he received at the MSRA Annual Banquet at the conclusion of the 1961-62 season accurately reflects both his long-recognized good-hearted comportment and his sometimes overlooked racquet acumen.. Though now well into his ninth decade and just a few years removed from serious health problems that arose in late 1996 and plagued him for the first half of the following year, Ketcham remains extraordinarily active and engaged on a number of widely varied fronts; indeed, the interview I conducted with him late this fall had to be scheduled several weeks in advance to accommodate the brimming nature of the schedule he continues to maintain. Since 1987 he has been President of his squash stomping ground at Rockaway, of whose annual invitational, as noted, he is still the Chairman; many of squash's most prominent players make their annual pilgrimage to Long Island as much for the opportunity to support their old friend and see him in his element as for the always-competitive tourney that awaits them. Treddy is also the American representative for the Jesters, Chairman of The Friends of Yale Squash and a Trustee for the USSRA's highly successful Endowment Fund, in all of which capacities he has served for more than 25 years. He is also a Vice President of the International Lawn Tennis Club and a member of the Board of Governors for the Prentice Cup, a biannual tennis competition matching up six members from current Yale and Harvard squads(three from each school) against a similarly composed Cambridge-Oxford group, with each country alternating as host. The players are selected both for their ability and for their goodwill ambassador standing, and Ketcham, himself the fairest and most highly regarded of players during his own lengthy era, has an important role in determining the composition of the U.S. team. Like a diligent farmer whose months of toil yield a full and plenteous harvest, Treddy has in recent years been reaping the deserved rewards for all his years of friendship and enthusiasm. In 1998 the now-thriving NISRA Intercollegiate Doubles Championship, which he had practically singlehandedly revived a decade earlier after a lengthy hiatus, was named in his honor. And just this past year at the annual ceremony at Franklin D. Roosevelt's Hyde Park estate in upstate New York honoring FDR's famous Four Freedoms speech, in which each of the four major services are represented by one of its former heroes, Ketcham was chosen to carry the banner for the Marines Corps which he served with such distinction nearly six decades ago, and was given a medal in recognition of his valor.

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Lawson, John D. (editor). American State Trials. A Collection of the... 17 vols. ISBN 1575886537, 2000

The Ultimate Collection of American State Trials Lawson, John D. (Editor). American State Trials. A Collection of the Important and Interesting Criminal Trials Which Have Taken Place in the United States, from the Beginning of Our Government to the Present Day with Notes and Annotations. St. Louis: F.H. Thomas Law Book Co, 1914-1928. 17 volumes. Reprint Buffalo: William S. Hein & Co., Inc., 2000. Cloth. New. * "There is no such work nor any approaching it in [America]. The purpose is to produce a set which shall rank with Howell's State Trials of England...." Marke, A Catalogue of the Law Collection at New York University (1953) 1035. Bibliographical notes are added pertaining to the sources of the trials included in this collection. Individual volumes available at USD100.00 each.

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HISTORY OF JOSEPH AND HIS BRETHERN, London Day & Son n.d. (but 1865)
Illuminated by Owen Jones and Henry Warren and drawn on stone by Albert Warren. Text and illustrations are both chromolithographed and face each other horizontally rather than vertically as might be expected by the orientation of the binding. "Jones is exploiting the new medium of Chromolithography to the full, and, since even the text is drawn, his pages owe nothing to the traditions of book design which are based on engraving: but since the text is drawn to imitate the regularity of type, there is no obvious link with the manuscript tradition either. Here is a new conception of book design, which prefigures the Kelmscott openings of thirty years later. (McLean , Victorian Book Design pages 128-9) Pages are somewhat foxed, especially at the beginning and end. Hinge crack at the title page. Previous owner's bookplate on front pastedown. Boards lightly worn. Certainly, a lovely and unusual book.

4to, original cloth, blocked in colors and gold, all edges gilt. not paginated.

[KW: Color Printing United Kingdom JONES, OWEN RELIGION]

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Wheat, Carl I. Mapping The Transmississippi West, 1540-1861. 5 Vols bound in 3 books, 2004

Wheat, Carl I. Mapping The Transmississippi West, 1540-1861. 2004 reprint of the 1957-1963 edition originally published by the Institute of Historical Cartography. Martino Fine Books, 2004. Oversized quarto. Five Volumes bound in three. 1302 maps described. 376 maps illustrated. This edition is in reduced format, making it both more practical to handle and more affordable. All illustrations have been reproduced, as has all the text. Reductions in the size of the illustrations have been made. New. * Wheat, the well-known California historian, has undertaken in this work nothing less than to trace the opening of the American West by studying the succession of maps which, beginning in the 1540's, accurately trace the paths of the explorers and the record of the resulting growth of knowledge. Mr. Wheat has sought out every map, manuscript or printed, relating to the Transmississippi West before 1861, and has selected the most interesting and important. These maps cover the story of Spanish, French and English exploration. Five volumes bound in three carry the story of American cartography and exploration through the Civil War. He discusses each map, showing its origins and weighing its significance and accuracy. Mr. Wheat has long studied the topography of the West and has searched patiently through map collections in all parts of the country. Scholars, collectors and dealers of Western Americana should find this work an essential tool for Mr. Wheat has produced a work of scholarship that to this day remains without rival in its field. In all 1302 maps are fully described, with many illustrated in full page. A chronological calendar of maps, a full index, and a system of marginal reference make these volumes easier to use than any other comparable work.

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