Charlotte Oliver is a reporter with Community News Service, part of the University of Vermont’s Reporting & Documentary Storytelling program.
BURLINGTON — Historian Kevin Graffagnino looked over his shoulder at the four newspapers up for bid, each from 1927.
“Flood Sweeps City, State” sat in large print across the yellowed front page of an old Rutland Daily Herald copy. Below read subheadings: “St. Johnsbury Roads Blocked”; “Bennington Flood Reaches Second Floor”; and “Man Saves Pie, Muffins,” among others.
“You have to be a Vermonter to find this compelling,” Graffagnino said.
The papers, which all covered the November 1927 floods, the deadliest natural disaster in the state’s history, were among 475 items up for auction Oct. 12 from the private collection of Vermont Superior Court Judge Robert Mello, who currently presides in Addison County.
William L. Parkinson Books of Hinesburg hosted the auction of Americana and state-focused Vermontiana that morning atop the plush patterned carpet of the Waterman Lounge on the University of Vermont’s campus.
The event brought out a small group of bidders, about half of whom sat in the back row and seemed like good friends, joking and laughing during and after bidding wars. “This one better bring some bids,” Graffagnino said at one point — then cards started going up in the air.
“It’s probably the best Vermont collection to come on the auction market in 20 years,” said Graffagnino, who started dealing Vermontiana at 17 and has worked with it ever since.
What makes Mello’s collection stand out is the mix of artifacts from both Vermont and American history, said William Parkinson, book dealer and owner of the eponymous auction house. Among the items of national interest was an 1857 report from the U.S. Supreme Court case Dred Scott v. Sandford — when justices ruled enslaved people and their descendents weren’t U.S. citizens and couldn’t sue in federal court.
Mello’s been collecting Vermontiana for some time and has been friends with Graffagnino and Parkinson for at least 30 years, said the latter. The Vermont judge decided to sell because “he was at a point in his life where it was just time,” Parkinson said.
Among his collection, early maps from Vermont and beyond stood out as special because of their historical value and excellent condition, Graffagnino said. An engraved hand-colored folding map of Michigan bound in a red book cover sold for $10,000.
A pale greenish globe on a small wooden stand titled “A New American Celestial Globe,” made by prominent early Vermonter James Wilson, went for the same price. Parkinson called it a “really extraordinary piece.”
The crowd that Saturday was a combination of collectors and dealers, members of a small community, Graffagnino said.
“Collecting is not a logical or intellectual process. It’s about your heart,” he said. For antique collectors like those gathered that day, it isn’t just about the thing and what condition it’s in — it’s also about the generational stewardship and who owned it before you, he said.
“I need more people who are afflicted with collecting,” said Graffagnino, only somewhat in jest. He added later, “It’s the emotional and spiritual pull of having this real authentic stuff in our hands and on our shelves.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: ‘It’s about your heart’: Bibliophiles bid on artifacts of Vermont history.