1841 Land Deed for Kentucky parcel signed by Samuel C. Atkinson, co-founder of Saturday Evening Post, to early paper maker Anthony Kelty

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1841. Very good condition. This deed for the transfer of 240 acres in Graves County, Kentucky, from Samuel C. Atkinson and his wife Marion R. and Samuel Tiller and his wife Christiana to Anthony Kelty, identified as a "paper maker of Chester County, Pennsylvania." (Samuel C. Atkinson, who identifies his occupation as "editor" is listed with his wife Marian and family in the 1850 U.S. census in Burlington, New Jersey.) The land had been sold to Atkinson and Tiller by David Smith, a "merchant of Paducah," and his wife Lucretia, to Atkinson and Tiller on May 8, 1839. The deed contains the bold signature of Sam C. Atkinson, who was cofounder in 1821 of the Saturday Evening Post, which set up its Philadelphia offices in the two-story brick building at 53 Market where Benjamin Franklin once published the Pennsylvania Gazette. In 1826 Atkinson also introduced the hugely popular magazine, The Casket, and the National Atlas. He became sole proprietor of the Post in 1828 and published it until 1839, when he sold it to George Rex Graham, soon after he had purchased the Kentucky acreage from David Smith. Alexander Kelty, who purchased the Kentucky parcel from the Atkinsons and Tillers in 1841, operated a paper mill during the 1830s at Buck Run near Coatesville in Chester County, Pennsylvania. While investigating the origin of a letter said to be written in 1835 by John Wilkes Booth to Andrew Jackson in which the actor threatened to assassinate Old Hickory, a Library of Congress conservator noted that the paper's watermarks (a dove and A KELTY) would date the letter to at least 1830, when Kelty began operating his mill.