USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts. 1630-1880, Vol. IV > Part 37
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At the era of Independence (1776), it has been reckoned that there were twenty-nine collections of books, fairly called in some sort public ones, in the colonies, and they contained in the whole less than fifty thousand volumes. The war was not over when the foundation of one of our most important collections of books in physical science was laid with the organi- zation of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1780.3 Before 1800 there had been from twenty to thirty such libraries additionally formed, and of these one third were in Massachusetts. In the last decade of that century two libraries, still flourishing, were established. The first of these followed soon upon the founding, in 1791, of the Massachusetts His- torical Society, whose property it is.4 The other, "The Boston Library," as its act of incorporation in 1794 terms it, is a proprietary library, with a
1 Of its later vicissitudes something has al- ready been said in Vol. II. pp. 221, 426; and a fuller account will be found, together with some- thing of the history of some of its manuscript and other treasures, in the present writer's in- troduction to the Catalogue of the Prince Li- brary, Boston, 1870. Books with Prince's name in them, and sometimes with his book-plate, are not infrequently found in some of the choicer collections of Americana throughout the land, and attest the depredations to which the col- lection has been subjected. The Brinley Cata- logue shows such. See also Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., 1879, p. 173, from which it would appear that Prince, at one time at least, made sale of some of his books.
2 See Vol. II. p. 419 ; also p 428, for notices of some law libraries. Joseph Green, the Boston wit, is said to have had the largest private library in New England in his day.
. 8 See the account of the Academy in Mr. Dillaway's chapter in this volume, and the con- stant reference to its members in Professor Lov- ering's. Its first printed catalogue was issued in 1802.
4 This society was not incorporated till 1794, and the course of its inception and early progress can be traced in its Proceedings, vol. i. Of its ten original members, eight were Boston men, -the Rev. Jeremy Belknap, D.D .; the Rev. John Eliot, D.D .; the Rev. James Freeman, D.D ; the Hon. James Sullivan, LL.D .; the Rev. Peter Thacher, D.D. ; the Hon. William Tudor ; Thomas Wallcut ; and the Hon. George Richard Minot. The other two were the Hon. James Winthrop of Cambridge, and the Hon. Wil- liam Baylies of Dighton. Its presidents to the present time have all been Boston men, - James Sullivan, Christopher Gore, John Davis, Thomas L. Winthrop, James Savage, Robert C. Winthrop. The first catalogue of its library was printed in 1796 (1,000 titles) ; a second in 1811 (4,000 titles) ; and a new one in 1859-60, when it contained 18,000 volumes. The Dowse Collection, formed of English authors chiefly, fine editions in fine bindings, 5,000 volumes in all, was bequeathed by its owner, Thomas Dowse, currier, of Cambridge, in 1856; and a separate catalogue of it was printed the same year. See Mr. Cummings's chapter in Vol. III.
VOL. IV .- 36.
282
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
select body of share-holders, and now numbers about thirty thousand volumes.1
During the early years of the present century the deficiencies of our libraries began to be remarked upon, since research was stopped in every direction by want of books. It was not, however, a time of munificent sup- port of libraries.2 In 1817 it was estimated that in Boston and Cambridge all the public and semi-public libraries could not present over sixty thousand volumes, including their large duplication of one another.
In 1804 the beginning of our principal law library, now known as the Social Law Library, was made, when Theophilus Parsons and others under- took a collection of such books intended for common use among a few law- yers associated together. From an humble start, it has grown by assessments of money, by gifts of books, and by appropriations of funds from Suffolk County. It was incorporated in 1814.3 Meanwhile the principal of the pro- prietary libraries had been started in 1807, growing out of an organization called the Anthology Club, which became finally the parent of the Boston Athenæum, of which William Smith Shaw was the first librarian.4 The col- lection has always grown healthily. In 1820 it held nearly 20,000 volumes, and in 1822 it was housed in the mansion in Pearl Street, bequeathed by Mr. James Perkins; and here it remained till 1849, when its present house on Beacon Street was first occupied. It has absorbed from time to time va- rious minor collections,5 has received munificent donations of money,6 and has been in the charge of librarians distinguished in their profession.7
1 It has at present no serviceable printed catalogue; but such lists have been issued in 1795, 1797, 1802, 1807, 1815 (7,000 volumes), 1817 (8,000 volumes), 1824, 1830, 1835, 1837, 1844 (10,000 volumes), 1849, 1855. This library should not be confounded with the later Boston Public Library.
2 For the first third of this century, a great library like the British Museum spent less than £600 yearly for books.
8 Its printed catalogues are dated 1824 (1, 500 vols.), 1849, 1865.
4 See History of the Boston Athenaum by Josiah Quincy ; Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc. i. 391 ; and Mr. Cummings's chapter in Vol. III. The orig- inal trustees were Theophilus Parsons, John Davis, John Lowell, William Emerson, J. T. Kirkland, P. Thacher, A. M. Walter, W. S. Shaw, R. H. Gardiner, J. S. Buckminster, and O. Rich, and their first rooms were in Scollay Building.
5 The library of King's Chapel, which began with a present of books from the King in 1698; the theological library of the Boston Association of Ministers, which its printed catalogue, in 1808, calls the fourth social library in Boston; the Boston Medical Library, of which a catalogue was printed in 1818; and the library of the Massachusetts Scientific Library Association.
Of the collection first named the Rev. H. W. Foote gives an account in the Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., May, 1881, p. 423, with a register of the titles. The books were stamped on their covers, DE BIBLIOTHECA DE BOSTON. One hundred and ten volumes remain.
6 Principal among them are $160,000 from William B. Howes in 1879; $25,000 from Na- than Appleton in 1853; $20,000 each from John Bromfield in 1846 and from George Bemis in 1879; $8,000 in 1826 each from Colonel Thomas H. Perkins and James Perkins (son of the James before named) conditioned upon a subscription of a like sum, which was obtained ; and $5,000 in 1858 from Thomas W. Ward.
7 Mr. Charles Folsom, the literary mentor of so many distinguished Boston writers, was for ten years its head, - Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., Decem- ber 1872; and (by Theophilus Parsons) April, 1873. He was succeeded in 1856 by Mr. William F. Poole, who had had the charge of the Mercan- tile Library, and is now the librarian of the Chi- cago Public Library. He is well known as a student in American history (see his chapter on " Witchcraft," in Vol. II.) and for his labors in the present, as well as in the past, in his Index to Periodical Literature. He was followed in 1869 by Mr. Charles A. Cutter, the present librarian, to whom the fraternity of librarians award the
283
LIBRARIES IN BOSTON.
To Boston belongs the credit of having started the first of a class of libra- ries which were of parallel growth with the movements in education that characterized the early half of the present century, - libraries which were intended mainly to help the self-education of the younger members of the commercial classes.1 The Boston Mercantile Library was begun in 1820, antedating by a few months the similar institution in New York, and by a year that in Philadelphia, both still flourishing; while the Boston institution, after many mischances, having the helpful encouragement at times of emi- nent men, and floated for some years by the most popular system of public lectures in the town, succumbed in 1877 (when it contained twenty-three thousand volumes) before the progressive work of the Public Library, and became the nucleus of its South End branch.2 Mr. William Wood started during the same year (1820) a somewhat similar institution, the Mechanics' Apprentices' Library, - which is still, however, with its five thousand vol- umes, doing a quiet work.3
The Legislature of the State had voted in 1811 to exchange its docu- ments with other States; and Congress, in 1813, agreeing to furnish its pub- lications, a collection of books was gradually formed at the State House, which grew to such proportions that in 1826 it was formally organized as a library. Though some of the States, even during the Revolutionary War, had begun libraries at their Capitals, the law of Massachusetts in 1811 is conceded to have been the most noticeable cause which has instigated the present system of State Libraries.ª Under the fostering care of the Legisla- ture, and with the aid of the reciprocity system, the State Library has now grown to be of large size, when we consider that its scope is chiefly that of legislative productions, with the addition of works on the history of the country. Its expansion has recently rendered necessary an enlargement of its rooms in the State House.5
We must assign to the period now under consideration three significant special collections, still in full usefulness, - that of the Handel and Haydn Society, started in 1815, rich in the works and scores of the musical pro- fession ; that of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mis-
headship in the science of cataloguing. His Rules for a printed Dictionary Catalogue, pub- lished as Part II. of the report of the Bureau of Education (Washington, 1876) on The Pub- lic Libraries of the United States, is the most ex- haustive survey of an intricate subject which has ever been made, and is recognized as such in Europe and in this country. He is the pres- ent editor of the Library Journal, and has lately _ begun the arrangement of the library on a novel plan. The first catalogue of the Athenaeum was printed in 1809 (5,750 volumes); other issues appeared in 1827, 1829, 1834, and 1840, with smaller supplements of later dates, which have now the form of an annotated bulletin of acces- sions. The late Mr. Charles Russell Lowell be- gan the preparation of a final critical catalogue
under Mr. Poole, but his death threw the comple- tion and printing of it into Mr. Cutter's hands, who issued vol. i. in 1874. This monument of bibliographical scholarship is not yet finished.
1 F. B. Perkins on " Mercantile Libraries " in the Report on Public Libraries, 1876, p. 378.
2 The Mercantile Library printed catalogues in 1844, 1848, 1854, 1858, 1869.
8 It printed catalogues in 1847 and 1873.
4 Dr. H. A. Homes on "State Libraries " in the Report on Public Libraries, 1876, p. 292.
5 It printed catalogues in 1831, 1839, 1846, 1858, and 1880, - the last, ample and creditable. The library at present has forty-six thousand volumes, ten thousand pamphlets, two hundred volumes of manuscripts, and is under the charge of Mr. C. B. Tillinghast as acting librarian.
284
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
sions, beginning in 1825; and that of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, established in 1828.1
The decade from 1830 to 1840 was not prolific in new attempts. The small beginnings, however, of what is now the excellent library of the Boston Society of Natural History were undertaken in 1831. Harvard College Library had grown to be of considerable value; but President Quincy in 1833 failed to influence the Legislature to protect it by a suit- able building, and Gore Hall rose from private munificence.2 In 1837 an article in the North American Review drew attention to the poverty of American libraries. In 1838 Mr. Lemuel Shattuck, in the city council, offered some suggestions about the preservation of documents; but no ac- tion was taken. In 1837 a movement, copied after action in New York State, had been set on foot by Horace Mann to establish district-school libraries; and up to 1850, when the law was repealed, near one hundred thousand volumes were accumulated in over two thousand such collections, - which, however, did not prove to have vitality, and little or no trace of the system is now observable. A more fruitful movement was preparing.
As early as 1825 there had been a scheme of co-operation proposed, by which all the libraries and allied institutions in Boston should be united under one roof,3 but it came to nought. The next effort was to proceed from one who had acquired some notoriety as a French conjurer, M. Alexandre. Preferring to be known by his patronymic in this more serious business, M. Vattemare, as Guizot said, entered as early as 1830, " with the energy of a man possessed of a fixed thought," upon a mission to build up libraries through international exchanges. On his second visit to America in 1840-41, securing the countenance of Abbott Lawrence, he introduced his scheme to Congress.4 John Quincy Adams gave him a god-speed to Boston, and in April, 1841, the Daily Advertiser and other papers were writing up his project. President Quincy encouraged him, and saw " but few obstacles and great advantages" in the grand conglomerate institution with its great public library, which should gather together all the collec- tions and unify the intellectual movements of the city. Distinguished cit- izens called a public meeting. Edwin P. Whipple . moved resolutions of affiliation in the Mercantile Library Association. Judge Story smiled upon the undertaking. At the meeting, May 5, the mayor, Jonathan Chapman, presided; a committee was appointed, and fourteen associations were in- vited to enter the league. A showing was made that $100,000, to be raised by subscription with aid from the city, would be sufficient to begin with. A committee of the Atheneum (W. T. Andrews, Edward Wigglesworth, and N. I. Bowditch) first uttered the sentiment of those who had kept
1 It printed catalogues in 1867 and 1873.
2 It was first occupied in 1840, the books then numbering forty thousand.
8 Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc. i. 384. The younger Buckminster had had dreams of one grand united library and museum as early as 1806.
His own library of three thousand volumes was the most valuable private collection in Boston, in the early years of this century. It was dis- persed by public sale after his death. Lives of the Buckminsters, 323, 398, 438.
4 Doc. XXVI. Cong. Ist Sess., Nos. 50, 586.
1
285
LIBRARIES IN BOSTON.
Lowell 1
outside the range of Vattemare's enthusiasm, and held that institution in opposition; and the fever subsided almost as rapidly as it had arisen.
The agitation, however, had induced the public to look at what their library facilities really were. Taking all kinds of libraries, some of them insignificant, and divided into circulating (10), social (36), and school (15),
1 This cut follows a portrait by Stuart, painted about 1824, and owned by Mr. John A. Lowell, by whose kind permission it is engraved. Mr. Lowell was one of the founders of the Athe- næum; later, its president ; and the original draft
of its charter still exists, in his hand. Quincy's History of the Boston Athenaeum. The Lowell family figures so largely in several chapters of this work, that it may be desirable to make clear here their kinship : -
Judge JOHN LOWELL, b. 1743; H. C. 1760; removed to Boston in 1777; lived where the Albion Building stands ; later in Roxbury, where he died in 1802.
The Rev. Charles.
John, . b. 1769; H. C. 1786 ; d. 1840; his likeness given herewith.
Francis C. b. 1775; H. C. 1793 ; the town, Lowell, named for him ; d. 1817, at Boston.
Charles Russell.
James Russell. Robert Trail Spence.
John Amory.
1
John, b. 1799; d. 1836;
General C. R. Lowell. (See Vol. III.)
founder of Lowell Institute.
286
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
it was found that Boston, then containing eighty-one thousand nine hundred and eighty-four inhabitants, had, of a somewhat public kind, about sixty libraries, mostly very small, containing in the aggregate one hundred and fourteen thousand six hundred and eighty-three volumes, - largely dupli- cates, of course, but still sufficient, if the College Library at Cambridge be added, to place Boston of all American cities far ahead for such facilities.
Meanwhile, Vattemare was pushing his favorite project of international exchanges, and in return for some gifts of books which had been forwarded through him to the Municipal Council of Paris, the Mayor received in 1843 a set of about fifty volumes, - the incipient collection, which, grow- ing a little afterward by accessions from the same source, in a few years, under other auspices, became the nucleus of our great Public Library.1
It was certainly now high time that something should be done, to enable American scholars to pursue studies in a creditable way. Judge Story might well doubt if America could furnish a single library where Gibbon's refer- ences could be verified. George Livermore said, in 1850, that all our libraries did not enable us to write the history of the New England Primer. Ticknor and Prescott could not pursue their studies without gathering libra- ries for the purpose. Professor Jewett, in 1847, said that not one American library could meet the wants of a student in any department. It was this poverty of our public collections which induced the formation of not a few important private collections in different parts of the country ; and they have exemplified the truth expressed by Thomas Watts of the British Museum, that the chief use of private libraries is to feed public collections.2
The town of Orange, Mass., as early as 1846 had made a small appro- priation to support a town library, though no enabling act had at that time been passed by the State Legislature. In 1847 President Wayland of Brown
1 Whatever we think of Vattemare, whether we call him an enthusiast, or something worse or better, we must recognize his contagious energy, which induced State after State to suc- cumb to his representations, so that by 1853 he had brought one hundred and thirty libraries and institutions within his operations; and between 1847 and 1851 had brought from France for American libraries 30,655 volumes, beside maps, engravings, etc. See U. S. House Doc. 1844, No. 539 ; 1848, Nos. 99, 590, 839; Senate Doc. 1848, No. 46; 1850, No. 126; Mass. Senate Doc. 1845, Nos. 26, 40 ; 1850, No. 117 ; Mass. House Doc. 1849, No. 151. It is certain that Vattemare con- sidered the pioneers of 1841 as the originators of our great Public Library. The Hon. R. C. Winthrop in 1855, in his address at the laying the corner-stone of the Boylston Street build- ing, in some sort recognized this claim. When the same gentleman spoke, Jan. 1, 1858, at the dedication of the building, he said that he left it to others to "do justice to the original projectors and founders of the institution; " but no one on that occasion attempted to indicate them,
because unseemly feelings of disparagement and pretension had been shown here and there over the question of individual relations to the pro- ject. The papers growing out of this 1841 movement are now, by the act both of Vatte- mare and Mr.' Quincy, in the Public Library. The exchange system gradually lost favor. George Livermore discouraged it in 1850; Pa- nizzi disapproved it ; Henry Stevens showed the cost of it to be much more than the return. All this time Guizot and some others were con- vinced of its great value. Vattemare continued some fitful performances in this way till his death in 1864. His son proposed to continue the arrangement; but the State Department at Washington, seeking the advice of Professor Jewett, fortunately failed to be again led into it.
2 Of the chief private libraries of thirty years ago, the Force Collection (Washington) is now a part of the Library of Congress; the Lenox (New York) has become a public library ; the Barton (of New York) and a principal part of the Ticknor (Boston) collections are now in the Public Library of this city.
287
LIBRARIES IN BOSTON.
University offered five hundred dollars to the town of Wayland, Mass., pro- vided an equal sum should be granted by the town. The question of the le- gality of such an appropriation was raised, and it resulted in rendering each tax-payer's burden voluntary, not compulsory. In this way the library was established, and was opened in 1850. Under this state of affairs, a repre- sentative from that town introduced into the State Legislature, in 1851, a bill to legalize within moderate limits a tax-levy for the founding and support of public libraries by towns. It became a law, and was subsequently so modified that in the end (1866) all limitation as to amount was removed, and later still (1870) even parts of townships could combine for such purposes.
But before this general action Boston had taken steps in the same direc- tion. Its city council had appointed in 1847 a joint committee on a libra- ry. Its mayor (Josiah Quincy, Jr.) had offered $5,000 for such a library, on condition that $10,000 should be added; but the city council and the public neglected the offer. On March 12 of the next year (1848), however, a special act of the Legislature was passed which authorized the city of Boston to found and maintain a library; and on April 3 the city accepted the act. Efforts were at once made to effect a union of inter- ests with the Athenæum,1 with a view to making that library the foundation of the new library ; but the efforts failed, and, it seems now, happily. The Hon. Robert C. Winthrop gave, in 1849, the first books under the new incen- tive. The next year, August 5, the Hon. John P. Bigelow, then mayor of the city, agreed with his friends that the sum of $1,000, which had been raised as a personal testimonial to him, should go toward a library fund,-and this proved to be the first gift of money. Some time before this the Hon. Ed- ward Everett had signified his intention of making a more important gift, but (through no fault of Mr. Everett) it was not consummated till two days after Mr. Bigelow's ; and this was a thousand volumes of United States doc- uments, the fruit of his collecting at Washington, and which, with the subse- quent accession of the collection of Josiah Quincy, and other additions, has formed what is considered the best set of such documents in existence.
The accumulations having now become considerable, a librarian (Mr. Edward Capen) was appointed May 13, 1852, by the Mayor, who antici- pated an action properly belonging to its Board of Trustees, which was organized only a few days later, May 24, when Mr. Everett became its first president.2 On July 6 this board made a preliminary report, sketching with some fulness the idea which they entertained of what such a library should be. The body of this report was drawn by George Ticknor,3 who threw him-
1 Quincy's History of Boston Atheneum, p. 186.
2 Mr. Everett was succeeded in 1865 by George Ticknor; who in turn was followed in 1866 by William W. Greenough, the present president, who has served already as trustee a term of twenty-five years, marked by a devoted interest in the library's welfare.
3 There is an account of Mr. Ticknor's con- nection with the library in the Life, Letters, and Journals of George Ticknor, vol. ii. ch. xv. See also a paper by the present writer in Scribner's Monthly, 1872. The Annual Reports of the li- brary are the best summary of its progress and register of its administrative development.
288
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
self heartily into the movement, with a spirit of progress and liberality much in advance of what some of his associates of the board, particularly Mr. Everett, thought desirable. The views of the report were so acceptable that they elicited some generous responses from the citizens; but it was destined to produce the most striking results in the mind of a distinguished citizen of London, then at the head of the great banking-house of Baring Brothers. This gentleman, Joshua Bates, was a native of Weymouth in this State, and had suffered from the want of public facilities for reading when, as a young man, he was making his way in Boston. The city was now applying to his firm for a loan ; and, as evidences of its prosperity, had sent to him various documents, among others this report of July 6. He recognized among the signers of it the names of gentlemen in whom he had confi- dence; and remembering his early experience, and incited by kindly feelings `toward a city which was almost the place of his nativity, he promptly, on October I, communicated to the Mayor his willingness to expend $50,000 for books, if the city would provide a building. A week before this letter was received, the city council had passed the first library ordinance. The offer of Mr. Bates made sure at once what was likely, however, in due time to have been attained; for it was not then known that the Hon. Jon- athan Phillips had before this (Sept. 28, 1849) drawn a will bequeathing $20,000 " to the maintenance of a free public library." The same gentle- man now, under the impulse of the general feeling, made a separate, imme- diate gift of $10,000 " for the purchase of books."1 Thus encouraged, the trustees started a reading-room in Mason Street on March 20, 1854, and on May 2 a library connected with it was also opened. In the following No- vember a commission was appointed to erect the library building, with the Hon. Robert C. Winthrop as chairman, and the corner-stone was laid Sept. 17, 1855. The building was completed and dedicated Jan. 1, 1858.2 Mean- while the collection of popular books in Mason Street had been success- fully administered under Mr. Capen; while a rich accumulation of the higher class of books had been constantly arriving from Mr. Bates, whose agents purchased according to lists sent from Boston. These accessions were made ready-for future shelving in a building in Boylston Place, hired for the purpose. To organize this most important part of the library, and to give the chief control of the whole to a skilled hand, an ordinance of the city was passed, March, 1853, creating the office of superintendent;
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