Manuscripts
The Society's manuscript department contains rich resources for the study
of American history and culture. Numbering over 1,400 collections and well
over a million items, the Society's manuscripts span the years 1613-1930
and are useful to scholars working in a variety of disciplines. The
history of AAS's manuscript collecting is varied, although the underlying
principle for acquisitions has always been that material should relate to
the history of America. As the Society has moved away from the role of
general library and museum to that of research library, so too has the
gathering of manuscripts become more specialized. Today, manuscripts are
actively acquired in four areas of collection strength:
- American book history
- New England diaries
- papers of prominent early New Englanders in the political,
religious, and military spheres
- papers and records of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Central
Massachusetts families, voluntary associations, and businesses
Manuscript collections, like their printed counterparts, are generally
limited chronologically to the period before 1877. Although the
acquisition of manuscripts has become increasingly focused over time, AAS
holds important collections in areas beyond those described above. Also
in the manuscripts department are the Society's own archives. An
excellent account of the Society's acquisition of manuscripts, by William
L. Joyce, appears in the Society's Proceedings 89 (1979): 123-52.
Isaiah Thomas' gift of his own papers initiated the Society's acquisition
of book trade manuscripts, and today the early American book trades
continue to be a central focus of all of the AAS collections. Today, the
manuscripts department holds much material valuable for the study of the
history of the book in America. Through the years, large and small
collections of records of publishing businesses have been acquired,
including those of Mathew Carey, Copeland & Day, D.C. Heath, G. &
C. Merriam Company, Lee & Shepard, McCarty and Davis, and West,
Richardson, & Lord. Booksellers' records, such as those of William
Cobbett, Jeremiah Condy, and the Boston Booksellers Association, are also
at AAS, as are records of bookbinders like William Merriam, printing press
manufacturers such as R. Hoe and Co., and paper manufacturers such as
Tileston and Hollingsworth. AAS has records not only of its own library,
but also of other library associations such as the South Gardner,
Mass. Library Association, the Worcester County Atheneum, the Washington
County, N.Y. Farmers and Mechanicks Library, and the Westfield, Indiana
Monthly Meeting Library. Related manuscript collections include the Book
Trades Collection and the Newspaper and Periodical Receipts
Collection.
The Society's extensive collection of diaries offers opportunities for
insight into the lives and thoughts of seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and
nineteenth-century New Englanders. Some of these diaries span a great
number of years and volumes, making them of particular
interest. Massachusetts diarists include the early New England divines
Increase Mather and his son Cotton Mather; silhouette artist Ruth Henshaw
Bascom; Salem, Mass. minister William Bentley; teacher and housewife Susan
E. Forbes; Westborough, Mass. minister Ebenezer Parkman; printer and AAS
founder Isaiah Thomas; and teacher and housewife Caroline Barrett
White. There are also diaries of a number of children and young adults,
such as Louisa Jane Trumbull, James Ferdinand Fiske, Edmund Quincy Sewall,
and the student journals of two young women attending Margaret Fuller's
Greene Street school, Mary Ware Allen and Hannah Gale.
Isaiah Thomas' acquisition of the Mather library from Hannah Mather
Crocker in 1814 marked the beginning of the Society's commitment to
preserving the papers of prominent early New Englanders. This library
contained the manuscripts of Richard, Increase, Cotton, and a number of
"minor Mathers"; also present were papers of such other notables as the
three Thomas Shepards. From that time onward, much other early material
has come to the Society.
Virtually all phases of Central Massachusetts history are covered by the
Society's manuscript collections, as well as all themes of Massachusetts
life. Resources on personal, family, religious, business, political,
social educational, early industrial and military life are all
available. Included among the Society's substantial holdings of family
papers are those of the Brown family of Worcester, an African American
family; the Chandler-Ward families of Petersham and Lancaster, the
Dewey-Bliss families of Worcester, Williamstown, Northampton, and
Royalston; the Parkman family of Westborough, three generations of
Worcester Salisburys, the Wards of Shrewsbury, and the Waters family of
Millbury.
The Society's collection of voluntary association records complements its
other manuscript holdings. Charitable organizations, literary societies,
and musical associations were popular eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
commitments and diversions, and so the Society's collection of voluntary
association records is an important complement to its other manuscript
holdings.
There is manuscript material at the Society valuable for research in other
areas as well. There are several collections of manuscript music,
strengthened by an accession received in 1983 from Mrs. Irving
Lowens. The preeminent collections of James Fenimore Cooper's printed
works at AAS are complemented by eight boxes of his papers received in
1990 from the estate of Paul Fenimore Cooper, Jr. Included are literary
manuscripts, business and legal papers, and correspondence with family,
friends, and publishers. AAS also has a large archive of research
material on Cooper compiled by James Franklin Beard, Jr.
From the outset, the Society was concerned with every aspect of America's
history, and archaeology was a major interest of early members. Although
the artifacts that accumulated during the nineteenth century have long
since been transferred to other institutions, several manuscript
collections (and the Society's own archives) reflect this interest in
archaeology.
Approximately three hundred scrapbooks, most dating from the second half
of the nineteenth century, contain material gathered on a wide variety of
subjects. Notable are scrapbooks of publisher Joel Munsell, temperance
lecturer John Bartholomew Gough, and publisher Clarence Winthrop
Bowen. Additionally, a number of volumes deal with the theater in Boston
and Worcester. Many of the scrapbooks are listed in the Society's General
Catalog; a checklist is also available. The scrapbooks collection is in
the process of being integrated with the manuscripts collection, and
records for them will be created in the online catalog.
Finally, there is a Miscellaneous Manuscripts collection. Arranged
alphabetically by personal name or place name, it consists, for the most
part, of single items by a wide variety of individuals, businesses, and
organizations. Occasionally there are several items by one person, but
not enough to warrant making a separate collection. An alphabetical
checklist in the library provides access to these manuscripts.
The Society actively seeks additions to its manuscript holdings. Gifts
are a vital source of collections, particularly of family papers and
diaries. The Nancy and Randall K. Burkett Fund, endowed in 1999 for the
purchase of manuscripts, has provided valuable support for expanding the
collections. Several other funds, including the Henry F. DePuy Fund, the
Harriette Merrifield Forbes Fund, and the John Thomas Lee Fund are
designated for both book and manuscript purchases.
There are three main resources for access to the AAS manuscript
collections:
- the online catalog
- the published manuscripts catalog
- the collection descriptions available in the reading room
Currently, collection-level records for about 1,200 of the Society's
manuscript collections (more than eighty per cent) are available in the
online catalog. About half of these machine-readable records are also
searchable in the Research Libraries Information Network (RLIN) Archival
and Mixed Collections (AMC) database.
In addition to the online catalog, there are other useful resources for
locating manuscripts. The Catalogue of the Manuscript Collections of
the
American Antiquarian Society, published in four volumes in 1979 by
G.K. Hall, is a printed version of the card catalog produced in the
1970s when the Society's collections were arranged and described under the
supervision of William L. Joyce with funding from the National Endowment
for the Humanities. The Catalogue is available for use in many
university
and research libraries in the United States, Canada, and Great
Britain. Records for all collections processed or reprocessed since the
Catalogue was published in 1979 can be found in the online
catalog.
The printed Catalogue is arranged alphabetically, with personal
names,
geographic names, and topical subject entries interfiled in one
sequence. At the beginning of volume one is a list of the subject entries
used when processing the collections and a list of the forty-six
collections that were item-cataloged (meaning that each manuscript in the
collection was described individually). Typically, the following
information is provided for each item: collection name, author name,
recipient name, date, type of manuscript, place where the manuscript was
written, number of pages, and a very brief summary of content. Most of
volume four is a chronologically arranged list of materials in the
item-cataloged collections. Detailed instructions on use of the catalog
can be found here.
Collection descriptions for every processed manuscript collection are
filed in binders in the AAS reading room. They often contain useful
information that goes beyond the descriptions provided in the online
catalog or the printed catalog, and therefore it is essential that
readers wishing to use manuscripts consult the collection descriptions
before requesting collections. The descriptions contain the following
information: collection name, size, location, finding aids, source,
biographical information, and content description. If a collection is
available on microfilm, that information is stamped on the collection
description. Large collections have longer collection descriptions, which
often include contents lists. Contents lists itemize collections at the
box, folder, or volume level, providing more specific access to the
information contained within collections. Handwritten card indexes to the
correspondence in several collections not item-cataloged are available in
the manuscripts department. When these exist, they are mentioned in the
collection descriptions.
For current information on the cataloging
status
of this and other AAS collections, choose "Collection Access" below.
- Barbara T. Simmons, former Head of Manuscripts; updated by Thomas
G. Knoles, Curator of Manuscripts.
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One of the earliest manuscripts in the Society's collections is the
journal
of a whaling voyage from London to Spitzbergen in 1613, attributed to
Robert Fotherby. The journal describes geography, wildlife, weather, and
whaling methods, and is illustrated with watercolors such as this view of
a sea-morse (walrus).
The Society's collection of manuscript materials relating to the history
of the book in America began with Isaiah Thomas' donation of his business
papers. Thomas preserved his own indenture, dated 1756, binding him at the
age of six as an apprentice to Zerhariah Fowle, a Boston printer.
A leaf of the manuscript of James Fenimore Cooper's The Prairie and
a
proof sheet with Cooper's corrections.
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Online Finding Aids
For current information on the cataloging status of this and
other AAS collections, choose "Collection Access" below.
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