Pierce textbook reveals bored Bowdoin student

ANTRIM, N.H. – Maybe Franklin Pierce could have been a better president if he had paid more attention in class.

The pages of Pierce’s science textbook from his days at Bowdoin College are filled with scribbles and sketches. Many feature his signature, practiced over and over with varying degrees of flourish. One shows a cartoonlike drawing of a man hanging googly-eyed from a noose.

“I think it’s supposed to be his teacher,” said Bob McNeil, the antiques dealer who owns the book.

The doodle-filled text is only one item in a collection that is believed to be the largest assembly of Franklin Pierce memorabilia in the world.

Bob McNeil doesn’t know how much the collection is worth; he’s never had it appraised. It’s so vast he doesn’t know how many items he owns or what each one is; much of the collection was bought in bulk. There are boxes full of documents he still hasn’t sorted through.

But McNeil is certain of two things. One is that he’ll never sell individual pieces. When he puts the collection up for sale, it will go in its entirety. The other certainty is that he’ll only sell to someone who plans to keep the items in the state.

“These days you can just go on the Internet to sell,” McNeil said. “But I don’t want to do that. It should stay here. It shouldn’t be taken out of the country. It shouldn’t be taken out of the state.”

McNeil’s collection has all the items one might expect – letters to and from the president, a campaign poster and official documents signed by Pierce. But some are more surprising – a bill for firewood the president used, a Manchester hotel registry Pierce signed, a trading card a company printed in the 20th century featuring a picture of the president on the front and a brief biography on the back.

A California native, McNeil said he became interested in Pierce when he moved to New Hampshire 18 years ago. He and his wife, Gay, were researching the history behind the 18th century Antrim home they bought when they discovered the president had visited it. In 1841, Pierce attended his brother Henry’s wedding to Susan Tuttle, the daughter of a judge who bought the house nearly 40 years before.

McNeil said it was enough of a connection to get him interested. He began asking local buyers to look into finding him Pierce memorabilia. Even McNeil was surprised by what his inquiries turned up. When buyers began knocking on doors around Hillsborough and Merrimack counties, locals brought out documents, letters, books, even a place card given to one of Pierce’s female relatives.

He lucked out when a Hillsboro lawyer put the contents of a safe from Pierce’s office up for sale 15 years ago. In the world of historical collecting, anything that has the signature of a president is considered valuable, McNeil said.

“Some people try and collect the signatures of every president we’ve ever had,” McNeil said.

But curiosity is what drives McNeil’s collecting. It started when he was a little boy, digging through neighbors’ trash to see what treasures they had thrown away.

McNeil said he’s already learned a lot about the only president from New Hampshire by reading documents he wrote. He’s gained even more knowledge reading what people wrote about Pierce. One of his favorite documents is an 1854 letter written by Neal Dow, the then-mayor of Portland, Maine, to his brother, in which he mentioned the president. “He … is 50 years old, but has no more dignity than a boy of 20. … There is no bottom to him – no weight – no power. … He is a pleasant and discerning character.”

But perhaps the biggest mystery McNeil’s collection has solved is the proper spelling of the town of Pierce’s birth.

“Right here,” McNeil said, pointing to a letter, “it’s ‘Hillsborough.’ With a ‘ugh.'”

With the bicentennial of Pierce’s birth around the corner, interest in the collection has increased. But McNeil is adamant that he’ll only sell to someone who will appreciate it as much as he does.

“I’ll only sell when I find the right buyer,” McNeil said.