An elaborate ornamental frame encloses a dramatic scene of everyday life in mid eighteenth-century New York: in the image we witness a volunteer company laboring to extinguish a fire at an unidentified location. Without access to the sorts of hydrants that are a common feature of today’s cityscape, a line of men passes buckets of water from hand to hand, a team effort that is memorialized both in the name of the company (Hand-in-Hand Fire Company) and in the emblem of a disembodied handshake that graces the top of the frame. Emptied into the engine at center, the water is manually pumped into the hose a firefighter aims at the burning building’s third-floor window.
Inscribed by Isaac Roosevelt, the certificate invites the Earl of Sterling to attend an evening meeting on March 3rd, 1762 at the house of a man identified simply as "Mr. Crawley."