You calling me yellow?

The Silver World

Let’s say you are the publisher of a newspaper in a small mining town in Colorado and you run out of the regular paper you use to print your publication.  What do you do?  In the case of The Silver World published in Lake City, Colorado, you find an alternative source of paper. Recently AAS acquired ...

The red vegetable pill or the blue vegetable pill?

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Graefenberg Gazette (New York, NY),  August 1847. The first thing that should grab your attention about this advertisement sheet is that it is printed in red ink.  This was a marketing trick by the Graefenberg Company that put out a wide variety of pills and elixirs.  This particular sheet promoted their vegetable pills, sarsaparilla compounds, eye ...

Filling in a Gap: Reporting Lincoln’s Assassination

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In May I picked up a large collection of newspapers from the Indiana State Library.  It took 20 book cart loads to unload the back of the 26’ truck.  There were a number of bundles of miscellaneous newspapers of single or scattered issues. While going through one of the bundles, I came across an issue of ...

Come Adopt-a-Book tomorrow night!

Patriot of 1776

Tomorrow night the Society is holding its seventh annual Adopt-a-Book event at Antiquarian Hall from 6:00 to 8:00pm. Come join us for libations and snacks (generously donated this year by Ed Hyder, Panera, and Crown Bakery). Each of the Society's curators has selected material for adoption including paper dolls, ledger books, newspapers, lithographs, and bound ...

Recent Arrivals Shelf – Modern Scholarship

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Living in the stacks amongst the vast collections of historical primary source material at AAS, one will find books of a much younger age.  AAS does not only seek to collect one copy of every thing printed in the United States up until about 1876; we also strive to add recent scholarship written about topics ...

Adopt-a-Book 2014

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This year the American Antiquarian Society will be holding its 7th annual Adopt-a-Book event on Tuesday, May 6th, from 6:00 to 8:00pm.  This event has been an entertaining and successful fundraiser for the library’s continued acquisitions of historic material. The money raised helps curators buy more books, pamphlets, prints, newspapers, and manuscripts.  On May 6th, participants ...

As Luck Would Have It

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As Thomas Jefferson put it, “I'm a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.”  Here at the American Antiquarian Society all of the curators work very hard in acquiring new items for the collections.  Every year thousands of items are added to our holdings. Sometimes ...

The Pay Off for a Curator’s Perseverance

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Last week, curator of children's literature Laura Wasowicz posted about finding a unique find in a dusty house. This week, curator of graphic arts Lauren Hewes talks about another tack curators more often have to take: "hard work and diligence." Recently, the Society’s curatorial staff was asked to blog about significant acquisitions and the process by ...

Curatorial Instinct: Or Flying Blind in Upstate New York

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In the most recent issue of the Almanac, we had a feature article about the process of bringing new items into the collection. This got us thinking about some of the interesting ways in which these treasures are found. In the coming weeks, each curator will share one of their favorite stories about finding a ...

Newest Issue of the Almanac Hot Off the Press

March 2013 Almanac

If you haven't yet seen a copy of the latest issue of our newsletter, Almanac, you can see it here! It has news on upcoming public programs, workshops, and conferences, as well as the opening of an exhibition in Bordeaux, France, recommended reading from the AAS community, and much more. In a new feature article, ...

The Acquisitions Table: Lewis Bradford Letters

Bradford, Lewis. Letters, 1817 – 1829 Lewis Bradford, a descendant of Governor William Bradford, and son of Levi Bradford and Elizabeth Lewis Bradford, was born in Plympton, Massachusetts in 1768.  Lewis lived his entire life in the town of Plympton, working as the town clerk for forty years.  In addition to his work, Bradford was a ...

The Acquisitions Table: The Boy’s Treasury of Sports, Pastimes, and Recreations

The Boy’s Treasury of Sports, Pastimes, and Recreations. Fourth American edition. New York: Clark, Austin & Co., 1850. Striped publisher’s cloth bindings are rare, and such a binding on a children’s book in good condition is even rarer. The charming gilt vignette of boys at play puts an added layer on an already delightful binding.

The Acquisitions Table: The Life of George Washington the Soldier

Regnier, Auguste (after a painting by Junius Brutus Stearns). The life of George Washington the soldier. New York & Paris: Goupil & Co., 1854. Printed by Lemercier, Paris. This print is one of four in a set depicting the life George Washington—the other prints include renditions of Washington as a citizen, a farmer, and a Christian. ...