16 JULY 1927, Page 31

If any reader has an autograph of Button Gwinnett, who

was born in Gloucester in 1735 and was killed in a duel at Savannah in 1777, let him treasure it above rubies. For this reckless: fellow wag one of the fifty-six American colonists who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776, and every American autograph collector aspires to possess the autographs of " The Signers." Gwinnett's autographs are the rarest of all. Last .year one of them was sold in New York for £5,700— a record which surpasses even the price that the late Mr. Pierpont Morgan paid for Luther's historic letter to Charles V. after the Diet of Worms. Since then three signa- tures of Gwinnett have been found in an old minute-book of the Wolverhampton Blue Coat Charity School for 1761, and the trustees have very wisely sold the book to an American healer for a substantial sum. Thus the man who subscribed his mite to the funds in the days of George III. is posthumously giving the Blue Coat School a r'handsome endowment.