Young Ladies Library and Literary Association of Oakland Female Institute. Donation Book, 1853-1855. The Oakland Female Institute was opened in Norristown, PA in 1845. By 1853 the Institute had 186 students and a library of “over 500 volumes of standard value—all trashy literature being contraband,” as an 1853 circular states. The school closed in 1880. This ...
Today we continue a series of blog posts highlighting items from our upcoming Adopt-a-Book event, slated for Tuesday, March 29, 2011, at 6PM in Antiquarian Hall. You can read the entire Adopt-a-Book 2011 catalog on the AAS website, where you will find descriptions of all 176 items up for adoption this year. Our fifth featured ...
When a new technology comes along, like the iPad or the Kindle, human consumers are naturally fascinated. We admire our colleague’s new-found technological abilities; we test the gadgets in the stores; we read about them in the press. Some among us predict the end of older technologies. Others scoff and stick with the tried and ...
Tuckerman, Sophia May. Letters, 1841-1857. Sophia May (1784-1870) was the daughter of Col. John May (whose jaunty portrait in military uniform hangs in the AAS reading room) and his wife Abigail, who was also his cousin. Sophia May married Edward Tuckerman (1775-1843). AAS has a business letterbook of Edward Tuckerman’s firm of Tuckerman and Rogers. Among ...
Hubbard, Thomas. Commonplace book, 1722-1805. Thomas Hubbard (1702-1773) was born in Boston, the Son of Joseph and Thankfull (Brown) Hubbard. He was a successful merchant in Boston, for a time the treasurer of Harvard and also the Commissary General of the province of Massachusetts. Hubbard began to compile this commonplace book in 1722, the year following ...
Dennie, Joseph. Papers, 1789-1790. Joseph Dennie (1768-1812) was born in Boston. After graduating from Harvard College, Dennie studied law in Charlestown, NH. Two years later he began contributing essays to newspapers in New Hampshire and Vermont. In 1796 he became editor of Isaiah Thomas’s The Farmer’s Weekly Museum and continued writing essays. In 1799 Dennie moved ...
Ashtabula Telegraph. Record Book, 1849-1853. The Ashtabula (OH) Telegraph was founded in 1846. The publisher was N. W. Thayer and the editor was W. E. Scarsdale. This ledger of nearly 300 pages covers the years 1849-1853 and details Thayer’s accounts with a large number of customers. Activities include subscriptions to and advertising in the Telegraph, job ...
One of the most interesting aspects of the manuscript collection here at AAS is its collections focused on the book trade in America. And one of the most interesting collections concerning the book trades is the business records of the Boston publishing firm, Lee & Shepard (for a PDF of the collection finding aid, click ...
An earlier post about bibliographies on everything from the California Gold Rush to tomatoes got me wondering about the impetus behind that heady experience (the Gold Rush, not the tomatoes). How did a man who heard all the fairy-tale stories of incredible wealth just waiting to be picked out of the rivers make the difficult ...
