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American poet, essayist, and editor (1752–1832) sometimes called the 'Poet of the American Revolution.' Exceedingly rare Revolutionary War–dated twice-signed manuscript DS, three pages on two adjoining sheets, 9.25 x 14.5, January 23, 1783. Legal document concerning an agreement between James Budden and Matthew Clarkson for the division of a plot of land on the north side of Market Street in the city of Philadelphia, signed at the conclusion by Freneau as a witness. Signed again by Freneau in 1792 to endorse a statement that both he and Ebenezer Hazard were indeed present when James Budden signed and sealed the document a decade earlier. Affixed at the bottom is a 1781 receipt signed by Budden confirming a payment from Clarkson. Archivally corner-mounted, double-matted, and framed with a plaque and two images to an overall size of 41 x 24.5. In very good to fine condition, with small holes and pieces of clear tape along the horizontal fold on the first page and on the reverse of the signed page; these in no way affect Freneau's two signatures.
As the founder and editor of the Democratic-Republican partisan newspaper National Gazette in 1791, Freneau was an activist journalist closely associated with Thomas Jefferson and intimately involved in early American politics. Meanwhile, his literary output combined elements of neoclassicism and romanticism while anticipating the later transcendentalist movement. Freneau is a remarkably scarce signature; in Charles Hamilton's 1979 The Signature of America, he writes: 'Of Philip Freneau, known as the 'poet of the American Revolution,' I have seen but one document in the past twenty years.' Freneau's signature remains virtually impossible to obtain—this is the lone example we have encountered.
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