Part 147

"The books were at first kept in the house of Robert Grace, whom Franklin characterizes as 'a young gentleman of some fortune, generous, lively, and witty, a lover of punning and of his friends.' Afterward they were allotted a room in the State-House; and, in 1742, a charter was obtained from the Proprietaries. In 1790, having in the interval absorbed several other associations and sustained a removal to Carpenter's Hall, where its apartment had been used as a hospital for wounded American soldiers, the Library was at last housed in a building especially erected for it at Fifth and Chestnut streets, where it remained until within the last few years. It brought only about eight thousand volumes into its new quarters, for it had languished somewhat during the Revolution and the war of words which attended our political birth. But it had received no injury. … Two years after removal to its quarters on Fifth street, the Library received the most valuable gift of books it has as yet had. James Logan, friend and adviser of Penn, … had gathered a most important collection of books. {2019} Mr. Logan was translator of Cicero's 'Cato Major,' the first classic published in America, besides being versed in natural science. His library comprised, as he tells us, 'over one hundred volumes of authors, all in Greek, with mostly their versions; all the Roman classics without exception; all the Greek mathematicians. … Besides there are many of the most valuable Latin authors, and a great number of modern mathematicians.' These, at first bequeathed as a public library to the city, became a branch of the Philadelphia Library under certain conditions, one of which was that, barring contingencies, one of the donor's descendants should always hold the office of trustee. And to-day his direct descendant fills the position, and is perhaps the only example in this country of an hereditary office-holder. … In 1869 died Dr. James Rush, son of Benjamin Rush, and himself well known as the author of a work on the human voice, and as husband of a lady who almost succeeded in naturalizing the salon in this country. By his will about one million dollars were devoted to the erection and maintenance of an isolated and fire-proof library-building, which was to be named the Ridgway Library, in memory of his wife. This building was offered to the Philadelphia Company, and the bequest was accepted. That institution had by this time accumulated about one hundred thousand volumes. … A building of the Doric order was erected, which with its grounds covers an entire square or block, and is calculated to contain four hundred thousand volumes, or three times as many as the Library at present has, and to this building the more valuable books of the Library were removed in 1878; the fiction and more modern works being placed in another designed in imitation of the old edifice, and nearer the center of the city."

_B. Samuel, The Father of American Libraries (Century Magazine, May, 1883)._

In 1893, the library of the Philadelphia Library Company contained 171,069 volumes.

LIBRARIES: The First Library in New York.

The New York Society Library is the oldest institution of the kind in the city of New York. "In 1729, the Reverend Dr. Millington, Rector of Newington, England, by his will, bequeathed his library to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. By this society the library of Dr. Millington was presented to the corporation of the city, for the use of the clergy and gentlemen of New-York and the neighbouring provinces. … 'In 1754 [as related in Smith's History of New York] a set of gentlemen undertook to carry about a subscription towards raising a public library, and in a few days collected near 600 pounds, which were laid out in purchasing about 700 volumes of new, well-chosen books. Every subscriber, upon payment of five pounds principal, and the annual sum of ten shillings, is entitled to the use of these books,—his right, by the articles, is assignable, and for non-compliance with them may be forfeited. The care of this library is committed to twelve trustees, annually elected by the subscribers, on the last Tuesday of April, who are restricted from making any rules repugnant to the fundamental subscription. This is the beginning of a library which, in process of time, will probably become vastly rich and voluminous, and it would be very proper for the company to have a Charter for its security and encouragement.' The library of the corporation above alluded to, appearing to have been mismanaged, and at length entirely disused, the trustees of the New-York Society Library offered to take charge of it, and to deposit their own collection with it, in the City-Hall. This proposal having been acceded to by the corporation, the Institution thenceforward received the appellation of 'The City Library,' a name by which it was commonly known for a long time. A good foundation having been thus obtained, the library prospered and increased. … In 1772, a charter was granted to it by the colonial government. The war of the revolution, however, which soon after occurred, interfered with these pleasing prospects; the city fell into the possession of the enemy; the effect on all our public institutions was more or less disastrous, and to the library nearly fatal. An interval of no less than fourteen years, (of which it possesses no record whatever,) here occurs in the history of the society. At length it appears from the minutes, that 'the accidents of the late war having nearly destroyed the former library, no meeting of the proprietors for the choice of trustees was held from the last Tuesday in April, 1774, until Saturday, the 21st December, 1788, when a meeting was summoned.' In 1789, the original charter, with all its privileges, was revived by the legislature of this state; the surviving members resumed the payment of their annual dues, an accession of new subscribers was obtained, and the society, undeterred by the loss of its books, commenced almost a new collection."

_Catalogue of the New York Society Library: Historical Notice._

LIBRARIES: Redwood Library.

While Bishop Berkeley was residing, in 1729, on his farm near Newport, Rhode Island, "he took an active share in forming a philosophical society in Newport. … Among the members were Colonel Updike, Judge Scott (a granduncle of Sir Walter Scott), Nathaniel Kay, Henry Collins, Nathan Townsend, the Reverend James Honeyman, and the Reverend Jeremiah Condy. … The Society seems to have been very successful. One of its objects was to collect books. It originated, in 1747, the Redwood Library."

_A. C. Fraser, Life and Letters of George Berkeley (volume 4 of Works), page 169._

The library thus founded took its name from Abraham Redwood, who gave £500 to it in 1747. Other subscriptions were obtained in Newport to the amount of £5,000, colonial currency, and a building for the library erected in 1750.

_United States of America: Free Public Libraries._

"Mr. Ewart, in his Report of the Select Committee on Public Libraries, 1849, says: 'Our younger brethren, the people of the United States, have already anticipated us in the formation of libraries entirely open to the public.' No free public library, however, was then in operation, in the United States, yet one had been authorized by legislative action. The movements in the same direction in England and the United States seem to have gone on independently of each other; and in the public debates and private correspondence relating to the subject there seems to have been no borrowing of ideas, or scarcely an allusion, other than the one quoted, to what was being done elsewhere. In October, 1847, Josiah Quincy, Jr., Mayor of Boston, suggested to the City Council that a petition be sent to the State legislature asking for authority to lay a tax by which the city of Boston could establish a library free to all its citizens. The Massachusetts legislature, in March, 1848, passed such an act, and in 1851 made the act apply to all the cities and towns in the State. {2020} In 1849 donations of books were made to the Boston Public Library. Late in the same year Mr. Edward Everett made to it the donation of his very complete collection of United States documents, and Mayor Bigelow a gift of $1,000. In May, 1852, the first Board of Trustees, with Mr. Everett as president, was organized, and Mr. Joshua Bates, of London, made his first donation of $50,000 for the use of the library. It was fortunate that the public-library system started where it did and under the supervision of the eminent men who constituted the first board of trustees of the Boston Public Library. Mr. George Ticknor was the person who mapped out the sagacious policy of that library—a policy which has never been improved, and which has been adopted by all the public libraries in this country, and, in its main features, by the free libraries of England. For fifteen years or more Mr. Ticknor gave the subject his personal attention. He went to the library every day, as regularly as any of the employes, and devoted several hours to the minutest details of its administration. Before he had any official relations with it, he gave profound consideration to, and settled in his own mind, the leading principles on which the library should be conducted. … Started as the public-library system was on such principles, and under the guidance of these eminent men, libraries sprang up rapidly in Massachusetts, and similar legislation was adopted in other States. The first legislation in Massachusetts was timid. The initiative law of 1848 allowed the city of Boston to spend only $5,000 a year on its Public Library, which has since expended $125,000 a year. The State soon abolished all limitation to the amount which might be raised for library purposes. New Hampshire, in 1849, anticipated Massachusetts, by two years, in the adoption of a general library law. Maine followed in 1854; Vermont in 1865; Ohio in 1867; Colorado, Illinois, and Wisconsin in 1872; Indiana and Iowa in 1873; Texas in 1874; Connecticut and Rhode Island in 1875; Michigan and Nebraska in 1877; California in 1878; Missouri and New Jersey in 1885; Kansas in 1886. … The public library law of Illinois, adopted in 1872, and since enacted by other Western States, is more elaborate and complete than the library laws of any of the New England States. … The law of Wisconsin is similar to that of Illinois. … New Jersey has a public-library law patterned after that of Illinois."

_W. F. Poole, President's Address at the annual meeting of the American Library Association, 1887._

The State of New York adopted a library law in 1892, under which the creation of free libraries has been promisingly begun. A law having like effect was adopted in New Hampshire in 1891.

LIBRARIES: United States of America: Library Statistics of 1891.

"As to the early statistics of libraries in this country but little can be found. Prof. Jewett, in his 'Notices of Public Libraries,' published by the Smithsonian Institution in 1850, gave a summary of public libraries, amounting to 694 and containing at that time 2,201,632 volumes. In the census of 1850 an attempt was made to give the number of libraries and the number of volumes they contained, exclusive of school and Sunday school libraries. This number was 1,560; the number of volumes, 2,447,086. In 1856 Mr. Edward Edwards in his summary of libraries gave a much smaller number of libraries, being only 341, but the number of volumes was nearly the same, being 2,371,887, and was also based upon the census of 1850. Mr. William J. Rhees, in his 'Manual of Public Libraries,' which was printed in 1859, gave a list of 2,902 libraries, but of all this number only 1,312 had any report whatever of the number of volumes they contained. From these meager statistics it is seen that the reports do not vary very much, giving about the same number of libraries and number of volumes in them, taking account of the changes that would occur from the different classifications as to what was excepted or omitted as a library. The annual reports of the Bureau from 1870 to 1874 contained limited statistics of only a few hundred libraries, and little more is shown than the fact that there were about 2,000 public libraries of all kinds in the United States. About five years of labor was expended in collecting material for the special report of the Bureau upon public libraries, which was printed in 1876, and this gave a list of 3,649 libraries of over 300 volumes, and the total number of volumes was 12,276,964, this being about the first fairly complete collection of library statistics. In the report of the Bureau for 1884-85, after considerable correspondence and using the former work as a basis, another list of public libraries was published, amounting to 5,388 libraries of over 300 volumes, an increase of 1,869 libraries in ten years, or almost 54 per cent. The number of volumes contained in these libraries at that time was 20,622,076, or an increase of about 66 per cent, and showing that the percentage of increase in the number of volumes was even greater than that of the number of libraries. An estimate of the proportion of smaller libraries under 500 volumes in that list indicates that these smaller libraries included only about 20 per cent of the books, so that this list could be said to fairly show the extent of the libraries at that time. In the report for 1886-87, detailed statistics of the various classes of libraries were given, except those of colleges and schools, which were included in the statistics of those institutions. From the uncertainty of the data and the imperfect records given of the very small libraries, it was deemed best to restrict the statistics to collections of books that might be fairly called representative, and as those having less than 1,000 volumes made but a proportionally small percentage of the whole number of books the basis of 1,000 volumes or over was taken. This list includes the statistics only of libraries of this size and amounted to 1,777 libraries, containing 14,012,370 volumes, and were arranged in separate lists by classes as far as it could be done. … The number of libraries and of volumes in each of the seven special classes in the report made in 1887 was as follows: Free public lending libraries, 434; volumes, 3,721,191; free public reference libraries, 153; volumes, 3,075,099; free public school libraries, 93; volumes, 177,560; free corporate lending libraries, 241; volumes 1,727,870; libraries of clubs, associations, etc., 341; volumes, 2,460,334; subscription corporate libraries, 452; volumes, 2,644,929; and circulating libraries proper, 751; volumes, 215,487. The statistics [now] given … are for the year 1891, and include only libraries of 1,000 volumes and over, thus differing from the complete report of 1885. … {2021} There were, in 1891, 3,804 libraries. Of these, 3 contain over 500,000 volumes; 1 between 300,000 and 500,000; 26 between 100,000 and 300,000; 68 between 50,000 and 100,000; 128 between 25,000 and 50,000; 383 between 10,000 and 25,000; 565 between 5,000 and 10,000; and 2,360 between 1,000 and 5,000. … The North Atlantic Division contains 1,913 libraries, or 50.3 per cent of the whole number; the South Atlantic, 339, or 8.88 per cent; the South Central, 256, or 6.73 per cent; the North Central, 1,098, or 28.87 per cent, and the Western, 198, or 5.22 per cent. Of the distribution of volumes in the libraries, the North Atlantic Division has 16,605,286 or 53.34 per cent; the South Atlantic, 4,276,894, or 13.71 per cent; the South Central 1,345,708, or 4.03 per cent; the North Central, 7,320,045, or 23.32 per cent; and the Western, 1,593,974, or 5.34 per cent. … From [1885 to 1891] the increase in the United States in the number of libraries was from 2,987 to 3,804, an increase of 817, or 27.35 per cent; in the North Atlantic, from 1,543 to 1,913, an increase of 370, or 24 per cent; in the South Atlantic, from 289 to 338, an increase of 49, or 17 per cent; in the South Central, from 201 to 256, an increase of 55, or 27.5 per cent; in the North Central, from 813 to 1,099, an increase of 286, or 35.18 per cent; and in the Western, from 141 to 198, an increase of 57, or 40.43 per cent. These figures show that, comparatively, the largest increase in the number of libraries was in the Western Division, and of the number of volumes the greatest increase was in the North Central Division. The percentage of increase in the whole country was 66.3 for six years, or an average of over 11 per cent each year, which at this rate would double the number of volumes and libraries every nine years. … In the United States in 1885 there was one library to each 18,822 of the population, while in 1891 there was one to every 16,462, or a decrease of population to a library of 2,360, or 12.5 percent; in the North Atlantic Division the decrease was from 10,246 to 9,096, 1,150, or 11.2 per cent; in the South Atlantic, from 28,740 to 26,206, 2,534, or 8.08 per cent; in the South Central, from 48,974 to 42,863, 6,111, or 12.5 per cent; in the North Central, from 24,807 to 20,348, 4,459, or 18 per cent; and in the Western, from 15,557 to 15,290, 277 or 1.8 per cent. The distribution of libraries in the North Atlantic Division shows the smallest average population to a library and the least change in the number, except the Western Division, where the increase of population from immigration has been greater than the increase in the number of libraries. But, generally, the establishment and growth in the size of libraries have been very large in nearly every section. … This shows that in 1885 there were in the United States in the libraries of the size mentioned 34 books to every 100 of the population, while in 1891 this number was 50, or an increase of 16 books, or 47 per cent. In the North Atlantic Division the increase was from 66 to 95, an increase of 29 books, or 34 per cent; in the South Atlantic, from 34 to 48, an increase of 14, or 41 per cent; in the South Central, from 9 to 12, an increase of 3, or 33.33 per cent; in the North Central, from 20 to 33, an increase of 13, or 65 per cent; and in the Western, from 43 to 53, an increase of 10, or 23 per cent. These figures show that, comparatively, the largest increase of books to population has been in the great Northwest, over 11 per cent each year. In the whole country there has been an average increase of 7.8 per cent per annum; that is, the increase of the number of books in the libraries of the country has been 7.8 per cent greater than the increase of the population during the past six years."

_W. Flint, Statistics of Public Libraries (United States Bureau of Education, Circ. of Information Number 7, 1893)._

LIBRARIES: United States of America: Massachusetts Free Libraries.

"In 1839 the Hon. Horace Mann, then Secretary of the Board of Education, stated as the result of a careful effort to obtain authentic information relative to the libraries in the State, that there were from ten to fifteen town libraries, containing in the aggregate from three to four thousand volumes, to which all the citizens of the town had the right of access; that the aggregate number of volumes in the public libraries, of all kinds, in the State was about 300,000; and that but little more than 100,000 persons, or one-seventh of the population of the State, had any right of access to them. A little over a half century has passed. There are now 175 towns and cities having free public libraries under municipal control, and 248 of the 351 towns and cities contain libraries in which the people have rights or free privileges. There are about 2,500,000 volumes in these libraries, available for the use of 2,104,224 of the 2,238,943 inhabitants which the State contains according to the census of 1890. The gifts of individuals in money, not including gifts of books, for libraries and library buildings, exceed five and a half million dollars. There are still 103 towns in the State, with an aggregate population of 134,719, which do not have the benefit of the free use of a public library. These are almost without exception small towns, with a slender valuation, and 67 of them show a decline in population in the past five years. The State has taken the initiative in aiding the formation of free public libraries in such towns."

_First Report of the Free Public Library Commission of Massachusetts, 1891, pref._

The second report of the Commissioners, 1892, showed an addition of 36 to the towns which have established free public libraries.

LIBRARIES: United States of America: The American Library Association.