A Selection of Documents That Made History, Curated by Founder Steven Raab
Steven Raab began collecting in 1958, when he was nine years old. His love for history evolved alongside his collection.
He has now been in the business of buying and selling historical autographs for nearly 35 years. In that time, he has handled historical treasures of the highest quality. Browsing our current inventory, Steven selected 20 Treasures that spoke to him and would befit the most important collections; rare, important, and exciting. These are documents that record crucial moments in world history that relate to–and are often signed by–the central players to those great events, such as John Hancock, Napoleon, Einstein, and Edison.
Among the treasures Steven chose to include are several presidential autograph letters: George Washington manages the Army’s inoculation campaign during the Revolutionary War; Thomas Jefferson looks to acquire fossils from the unexplored West; and Abraham Lincoln writes of “our gallant and suffering soldiers” during the Civil War, just to name a few examples.
In world leaders, Steven highlights important letters of Queen Victoria, Gandhi, and Churchill.
Going back even further into the past, three of the items bring us to a time when the United States did not yet exist: a medieval poetry manuscript; an early 15th-century manuscript that references figures made famous by Shakespeare; and a 1485 document signed by Ferdinand and Isabella regarding the Inquisition are included.
From the fourteenth century to the mid-twentieth, the historical documents in this selection are those that truly made history.
