November 6th Rare Autograph & Document Auction

Lot #8:

RARE DOCUMENT SIGNED BY THOMAS NELSON JR., FOUNDING FATHER AND SIGNER OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

NELSON, Thomas, Jr. (1738-1789). Document signed (“Thos Nelson Jr”), York County, Virginia, 20 September 1773. Also signed by Virginia politician and military officer Cole DIGGES. An elegant document appointing William Digges as Sheriff of the County of York. William Digges (1742-1804) and Cole Digges, the signatory of this appointment, was cousins; their grandfather, also named Cole Digges, helped establish Yorktown, Virginia, and spent two decades on the Virginia Governor’s Council after representing the now-defunctWarwick County in the House of Burgesses. Both William and the younger Cole would later represent the same county in the Virginia House of Delegates, and William Digges would later represent the county during the Virginia Ratification Convention of 1788. Provenance: Anderson Galleries, 9-10 January 1935, lot 527 – Arthur J. Stegall Jr. Collection. Thomas Nelson Jr. was elected to Virginia’s House of Burgesses. He was a very outspoken opponent of Britain and their policies toward the colonies and was one of the first leaders in the colonies to entertain the idea of an independence for the colonies. He believed that it was absurd to have the colonists hold an “affection for a people who are carrying on the most savage war against us.” On November 7, 1774, Nelson was a member of the Yorktown Tea Party. Citizens of York County, Virginia, had passed a non-importation boycott in response to the Tea Act of 1773. When the British ship Virginia docked at Yorktown, enraged citizens marched onto the ship and dumped two imported half- chests of tea into the water. Nelson was appointed as a member of the Second Continental Congress in mid-1775, replacing George Washington when Washington left the Congress to go to Boston to take command of the Continental Army. He had returned to Virginia and was in Williamsburg on May 15, 1776 when the Fifth Virginia Convention passed a series of resolutions declaring Virginia was no longer a part of the British Empire. Nelson immediately carried the news from Virginia to