The Acquisitions Table: Moral Tales for Young People

Edgeworth, Maria.  Moral Tales for Young People.New York: George Long, 1821. It is always gratifying to discover another edition of Maria Edgeworth’s popular Moral Tales that is new to AAS.  George Long (1771?-1843) produced a steady output of textbooks and children’s books, many of which were written by British and European authors, including Miss Edgeworth.  Interestingly, ...

The Acquisitions Table: The Clay Tribune

The Clay Tribune (New York).  May 4 – Nov. 2, 1844. 23 issues. This file combined with the issues already owned by AAS gives us one of three known complete files of this campaign newspaper.  It was published by Horace Greeley as a separate political issue of the daily and weekly Tribune.  Greeley greatly admired Henry ...

The Acquisitions Table: The Birds of America

Bien, Julius, after John James Audubon. The Birds of America.New York:Roe Lockwood & Son, publishers. Chromolithography by J. Bien.Reissued by John Woodhouse Audubon, 1860. Julius Bien (1826-1909) came to the United States from Germany in 1848 and by 1850 had opened a lithography shop in New York. The Society holds over thirty examples of his prints, ...

The Acquisitions Table: Photograph Album

Photograph Album. [1863-1866]. This album of over 150 cartes-de-visite images of American prints illustrates the methods used to distribute images in the nineteenth century.  Many of the photographs were made by John B. Soule.  Soule worked with lithographers, such as J. H. Bufford, to reproduce popular lithographed images of children, attractive women, kittens, and comical ...

The Acquisitions Table: The Blue Ribbons

Drury, Anna H.  The Blue Ribbons: A Story of the Last Century.  Boston: Whittemore, Niles and Hall, 1856. This is truly a mid-nineteenth-century creation: a fairy tale set in the eighteenth century!  Alexis, a young boy growing up in Louis XIV’s France, encounters a beautiful and benevolent female fairy in the forest—who turns out to be ...

The Acquisitions Table: Leicester Academy List of Students

Leicester Academy, List of Students, 1812-1817. Leicester Academy was founded in 1784 in Leicester, Massachusetts, and functioned as a private, co-educational institution until 1921, when it was leased to the town to be used as a public high school.  This volume, containing a list of students, will be added to the already substantial collection of school ...

The Acquisitions Table: Grigg, Elliot & Co. List of Books

Trade List of Books Published by Grigg, Elliot & Co….Philadelphia, s.n., 1847. This broadside listing titles for sale by the Philadelphia book publisher Grigg, Elliot & Co., includes details about their stock of poetry, medical texts, and school books. The Society has a large collection of Philadelphia bookseller and book publisher catalogues and sale ...

The Acquisitions Table: Ruth Chenery

Davis, Caroline E. Kelly.  Ruth Chenery.  Boston: Henry Hoyt, ca. 1867. This comic frontispiece captures the embarrassment of young Ruth Chenery; the well-intentioned young woman made a pudding only to discover that she had used a cracked and hopelessly damaged dish, and she receives a sound scolding from her maiden Aunt Keziah.  The struggle of high-spirited ...

The Acquisitions Table: Jonathan Huse Papers

Huse, Jonathan, Papers, 1795-1842. Jonathan Huse (1767-1853) was born in Methuen, Massachusetts and was graduated from Dartmouth College in 1788.  In 1795 he became minister of the Congregational church in Warren, Maine.  In the late 1820s a growing number of members of his congregation became interested in Hopkinsianism and a movement began to form a second ...

The Acquisitions Table: Plea for the Oppressed and Enslaved

Plea for the Oppressed and Enslaved (Austinburg, OH).  Feb. 3, 1847.  Vol. 1, no. 3. This title was mentioned in a county history in 1878, but no copy could be located in any library or historical society.  The content was mostly written by Betsey Mix Cowles and Abby Kelley Foster and was published by Jane Elizabeth ...

The Acquisitions Table: Amalgamation. The Wedding.

Edward W. Clay, Practical Amalgamation. The Wedding. New York, John Childs, ca. 1839.  This print by Edward W. Clay is one in a series of images that comments on interracial relationships in America during the 1830s.  Most of the prints in the set are held by the Society.  This impression is actually a second copy ...

The Acquisitions Table: Byerly’s New American Spelling-Book

Byerly, Stephen.  Byerly’s New American Spelling-Book.  Philadelphia: M’Carty & Davis, 1830.  This lovely wood engraving of the exotic Caribbean parrot fish is taken from a speller written by Quaker school teacher Stephen Byerly (c. 1797-1850).  His spelling and reading lessons are punctuated with clear illustrations of animals both common and uncommon to his young readers ...

The Acquisitions Table: Fitch’s Geography for Beginners

Fitch’s Geography for Beginners, ca. 1850-1858. This handwritten textbook of geography is something of a mystery.  Heavily illustrated with original drawings and images clipped from publications, the text is divided into lessons with topics such as “About Travelling,” “About the Surface of the Earth,” “About Animals,” and “About Trees and Plants.”  The title, Fitch’s Geography… suggests ...

The Acquisitions Table: The Cambrian of Boston

W. Barnard after Joshua Cartwright, The Cambrian of Boston, Willm. Marshall Master. Beating off a French Butter Privateer, on 23 October 1804. Boston, C. Cave, 1805. In the fall of 1804, the British ship Cambrian was part of a blockade of New York Harbor.  This print depicts the ship engaging a French cutter (several French ...