Broadsides
The collection of broadsides at the American
Antiquarian
Society printed before 1877 is believed to be the most extensive in
existence. It is made up of many thousands of items. These
single-sheet printed documents were issued locally in response to
specific popular or newsworthy events or were otherwise designed
for short-lived purposes. Many were subsequently destroyed or put
to other uses. Those that survive today provide interesting
perspectives on various aspects of the history and culture of the
nation.
In 1872 the librarian of the Society, Samuel F. Haven,
presented a useful definition of these materials in his semiannual
report to the Society. "Broadsides," he stated,"are the legitimate
representatives of the most ephemeral literature, the least likely
to escape destruction, and yet they are the most vivid exhibitions
of the manners, arts, and daily life, of communities and
nations. They imply a vast deal more than they literally
express, and disclose visions of interior conditions of society
such as cannot be found in formal narratives."
The subject matter
of the broadsides is remarkably diverse and ranges from the more
mundane official government proclamations and regulations, tax
bills, and reports of town meetings, to the more interesting
contemporary accounts of events in the French and Indian War,
the American Revolution, or the Civil War, as well as other unusual
occurrences and
natural disasters.
The collection also contains numerous
autobiographies and dying confessions of convicted criminals,
theater playbills, sheet almanacs, publishers' prospectuses,
advertisements, newspaper carriers' addresses, patriotic and
popular songs, ballads, and poems, broadsides illustrating
political party organization and controversy. For the student of
nineteenth-century social and cultural history, there is
information on a wide variety of local and national organizations
and societies that were established to promote industrial and
mechanical arts, agriculture, science, public education, religion,
the fine arts, and various reform movements. Isaiah Thomas was
highly instrumental in preserving many of his own and other
printers' most ephemeral pieces, and the Society actively collects
broadsides printed before 1877. Two such ephemeral collections are the William Allen
Collection and the Philadelphia
Centennial Collection.
Between 1978 and 1998, AAS received four grants from the National
Endowment for the Humanities to support the creation of a
bibliographical descriptive catalog, in machine-readable format,
of almost 19,000 of the Society's original broadsides and photostats
that were printed in the United States from 1639 through 1876. As
a result, AAS is able to provide full, scholarly access to its
broadsides through complex methods of indexing and
information retrieval, both locally, at the national level
through RLIN, the shared cataloging network of the Research
Libraries Group, and over the Internet. Researchers are now able to
retrieve pre-1877
materials through a wide variety of access points, including
author, title, multiple subject headings, added entries of personal
or corporate names, special genre headings (e.g., broadsides,
poems, proclamations, prospectuses, playbills, and advertisements,
first line of songs or poems except carriers' addresses),
appropriate bibliographic reference numbers, provenance data,
illustration technique, printer, and date and place of publication.
Some broadsides are not yet cataloged. They include programs for popular
entertainments printed after 1860, broadsides issued in Worcester, and
broadside ballads published after 1850 although work on the latter
material began in the fall of 2002.
In the summer of 2005, a team of students provided brief cataloging
records for the collections of bill heads, Civil War Envelopes, clipper
ship cards, invitations, menus, rewards of merit, stock certificates,
trade cards, as well as several thousand programs for theater, music,
circus, and other popular entertainments. Such materials now can be
searched through the online catalog. These collections in addition to
previously cataloged broadsides printed from 1821 through 1876 were also
digitized and are available through terminals at AAS and at libraries
subscribing to American Broadsides and Ephemera, Series I,
1760-1900,
an
Archive of Americana Collection issued by the Readex Division of
NewsBank.
- Georgia B. Barnhill, Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Graphic Arts
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New-Castle and Frenchtown Turnpike and Railroad Company.
Newcastle and Frenchtown Rail-road. Passenger cars, propelled by a
locomotive engine, leaves the depot ...
(New Castle, Del., 1833).
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For current information on the cataloging status of this and
other AAS collections, choose "Collection Access" below.
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