1885, Oct. 20. Present amount of the Fund (in cash),............... $256.80 $259.30 $234.30 1885, Oct. 20. Present amount of the Fund (deposited in Savings Bank),............. 1885, Oct. 20. Present amount of the Fund (in Savings Bank), Total of the twelve Funds,....... $1,125.05 22.28 $1,147.33 $517.74 $527.94 18.55 $1,123.58 $509.39 $97,333.77 Respectfully submitted, NATHL. PAINE, Treasurer. WORCESTER, October 27, 1885. The undersigned, Auditors of the American Antiquarian Society, hereby certify that we have examined the report of the Treasurer, made up to October 20, 1885, and find the same to be correct and properly vouched; that the securities held by him for the several Funds are as stated, and that the balance of cash on hand is accounted for. CHARLES A. CHASE. REPORT OF THE LIBRARIAN, It would, perhaps, remind us of the ripe age to which our American Antiquarian Society has arrived, if your Librarian were to follow the almost universal custom and refer to the present as the seventy-third annual or the one hundred and forty-sixth semi-annual report upon its library. He will not, however, allow a statement of the length of time which has elapsed since the incorporation, October twenty-fourth, A. D., 1812, to suggest the possible trial of your patience by a too long report. As we take some of our best lessons from the past, and often do not think to acknowledge them, your Librarian would at this time, just fifty years from the death of our third librarian, Christopher Columbus Baldwin, make grateful mention of the many helpful evidences of our indebtedness to his scholarship, industry and good sense. Serving from 1827, when he was elected both a member of the Society and its Librarian, until 1830, when he withdrew for a short period; he again took the position just after President Thomas's death in 1831, and faithfully held it until his sudden death at Norwich, Ohio, August 20, 1835, at the early age of thirty-five. He was the son of Eden Baldwin, of Templeton, Mass., and was born August 1, 1800. Both the picture by Chester Harding, which adorns these walls, and the pen-portrait by his devoted friend and co-worker, William Lincoln, which appears in a memorial address read at the Society's annual meeting, October 23, 1835, are pronounced true to the life by the few early friends who survive him. Mr. Baldwin's reports. appear to have been generally spread upon the records, but not to have been printed, except possibly in the newspapers of the time. A fragment of his last report - for April, 1835 - we have recently found in a box of his papers. As it was written but three months before his death, is not recorded, and contains wise counsel for us to-day, I shall ask that he may thus speak to us. He says: "The Librarian, at the annual meeting on the 23rd October, last (1834), indulged the belief that he should be able to complete the catalogue of the library before the semi-annual meeting in May; in this, however, he has been disappointed. Since the meeting in October he has been engaged in transcribing and preparing it for publication. Between this and the meeting in October, he expects to be able to complete the transcript and to compare each publication described on the catalogue with each publication in the library. It was one of the objects of the liberal founder of the institution that its library should contain a complete collection of the productions of American authors. In pursuance of this plan, the Librarian has bestowed as much time as could be spared from other duties in collecting publications of American origin. It is believed that no institution in the country has proposed the accomplishment of a similar object. The materials of history are found originally in pamphlets, newspapers and publications of this description. These exist in great abundance in every part of the community, and are permitted to perish from the impression that no use can be made of them. They are, however, indispensably necessary to the successful accomplishment of the labors of the historian. It is feared that a great number of those published in the early settlement of the country are irrevocably lost. Until within a few years past no place had been provided for their reception and preservation. Individuals had, in some instances, attempted to make collections and succeeded to a certain extent, but the result of their industry in this respect has availed little, from the fact that at their decease their collections have been distributed among heirs like other property. This was the case with the voluminous collections of the Mathers, and those of Thomas Prince which he began when he was in college, have shared a fate but little better. It is believed that the collections now in the Historical Society, derived from the industry of this indefatigable collector, comprise only a fragment of the whole which he left at his death. A large quantity of his manuscripts and books were sold at auction about 1800, in the County of Worcester, and are now so scattered as to forbid all hope of their recovery. This was, undoubtedly, the largest collection that had been made in the country at that time and the destruction of so great a portion of it is now much to be lamented." We have lately been obliged to decline, with regret, on account of the lack of funds which could be devoted to that purpose, unusual opportunities for procuring both Northern and Southern periodicals relating to the War of the Rebellion. Within a month a war file of the New York Herald, in binding, has been offered to us for one hundred dollars, and within a week we have been asked by one of our members, who was colonel in the Confederate service, to secure the Richmond Daily Sentinel complete, i. e., from March 11, 1863, to April 1, 1865, and the Despatch, Enquirer, Examiner, and Whig-all of Richmond-for the months of May, June and July, 1864. These we can have "at such prices as the purchaser may deem reasonable." What if we could put along-side our New York Tribune story of the war, that of the Herald and World, adding to them files of Richmond and Charleston newspapers of the same period! How grateful the future Bancroft, McMaster or Fiske would be to us as a society, or to the founder of a society fund the use of which should preserve to them and to remote posterity, the history of American Slavery and of the Great Rebellion upon which it was based. As for some unexplained reason our newspaper files from 1830 to 1840 are not what they should be, so the same may be said of the war period from 1861 to 1865. Our alcove of rebellion and slavery literature is almost wholly indebted to exchanges and gifts for its present flourishing condition. Is it not possible |