The Intellectual Life
In all the colonies interest in intellectual things was limited, and
the standards reached by the generality were probably no higher than those
of the people at large in England in the eighteenth century. In proportion
to the population but few persons were highly educated, for a majority of
the colonists either had no book learning at all or had no more than the
rudiments of reading, writing, and accounting. The back country and the
frontier had very few schools of any kind, and such popular education as
was in vogue was confined almost entirely to the older settled regions
along the coast, and there, what is now known as the education of the
masses had scarcely yet been thought of even as an ideal. To the colonials
popular education in the modern sense was as foreign as were democratic
ideas in government.
The nearest approach to a plan of education for every one was made in New
England, at least in Massachusetts and Connecticut, including the former
colonies of Plymouth and New Haven. Here the colonists recognized the
obligation of teaching all children something and imposed on the parents
or the towns the duty of providing local schools for the benefit of the
community. This obligation was so well understood that in laying out new
towns, particularly after 1715, tracts were frequently set aside for
schools, not only in Connecticut and Massachusetts but also in New
Hampshire, Maine, and the Connecticut settlement in the Wyoming Valley.
The higher education necessary for preparing boys for college was
furnished partly by the grammar schools and partly, perhaps to a larger
extent in the earlier period than afterwards, by ministers who conducted
schools in their parsonages or rectories in order to eke out their modest
salaries.
The subjects taught in the log or clapboarded schoolhouses were reading,
writing, arithmetic, and the catechism. Spelling was introduced early,
with little effect, however, as far as uniformity was concerned; but
English grammar was not cultivated in the schools even in the larger
centers until about 1760. The first aids to learning were the hornbook,
the A B C book, and the primer. Dilworth's speller was in general use, if
we may judge from its frequent appearance in the lists of books imported.
Governor Wolcott of Connecticut tells us that he never went to school a
day in his life, but was taught by his mother at home, and that he did not
learn to read and write until he was eleven years old; and his case was
probably by no means exceptional. Men in their wills often made provision
for the education of their children, but in most cases they desired
nothing more than reading and good penmanship; and an apprentice who had
been taught to write "a legiable joyning hand playne to be read" was
deemed properly treated by his master. Grammar schools where Latin and
Greek were taught were rare. The Hopkins Grammar Schools in Hartford and
New Haven and the Boston Latin School are noteworthy examples of higher
education in New England, but even these schools did not reach a very high
level.
Outside of New England, Maryland was the only colony which had a
rudimentary system of public education, for under the Free School Act of
1694 a series of schools supported by the counties was planned, to be free
for all or at least a number of the pupils attending. Such schools were
started sometimes by persons of wealth who would subscribe what was
needed; sometimes they were endowed by a single benefactor who would give
money for this purpose during his lifetime or by will at his death. The
original purpose of the free school was to provide an education for those
who were unable to pay tuition. Even in New England, tuition was usually
charged in most of the town schools, particularly of Massachusetts, during
the seventeenth century and the first quarter of the eighteenth. After
this time, however, the maintenance of schools by general taxation became
more frequent.
How many such schools were established in Maryland it is difficult to say.
Though an effort was made in 1696 to erect a school under the terms of the
Free School Act, nothing was accomplished at the time, and as late as 1707
Governor Seymour could say that not one step had been taken for the
encouragement of learning in Maryland. The fact however that the school
founded at Annapolis was called King William's School confirms the belief
that a building was erected in 1701, before the King's death, though it is
not unlikely that little or no progress was made during the first few
years of its existence. To this school, which was destined in time to grow
into St. John's College, Benjamin Leonard Calvert left a legacy in 1733,
and from that date, under the impetus of masters and ushers obtained from
England, its career was prosperous and continuous. On the other side of
the Bay, in Queen Anne County, a second school was established in 1723.
From the records, which are still extant, we learn that the subjects
taught were reading, writing, arithmetic, English, surveying, navigation,
and geography, and that the school possessed a fine assortment of globes,
maps, and charts. It offered an extensive course in mathematics, in which
it made use of a quadrant, scales, and compasses, and many English
textbooks. For a colonial school its collection of Latin and Greek texts,
treatises, and lexicons was unusually complete. But despite its equipment
and the fact that in plan and outfit it was manifestly ahead of its time,
the school had a checkered career and a hard struggle for existence.
Among both the Quakers and the Germans education was intimately bound up
with religion and church organization. The Friends' Public School, founded
at Philadelphia in 1689 and destined to become the Penn Charter School of
today, was not characteristic of the educational life of Pennsylvania.
Wherever they lived, the Quakers and Germans tried to establish schools
which were more or less under the supervision of their churches and hence
lay outside the movement which led to the founding of the public school
system in America. Though there were in Pennsylvania many private schools,
it cannot be said that this colony was abreast educationally of either New
England or Virginia. The Dutch in New York likewise established a system
of parochial schools, of which there were two in the period from 1751 to
1762 in the city itself. But by far the most elaborate effort to build up
schools in the interest of a particular form of doctrine and worship was
that made by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign
Parts, which, after its foundation in 1701, entered upon a vast scheme of
evangelization in all the colonies, including the West Indies. The
establishment of libraries and schools formed a most important part of
this undertaking. In New York alone, where the plan found its most
complete application, between five and ten elementary schools were
started. A single "charity" or free school in the city, which pay pupils
also attended, was inaugurated in 1710 and, under such deserving
schoolmasters as the Huddlestons and Joseph Hildreth, ran a continuous
course until the Revolution. Though the subjects taught were mainly the
three R's, the Psalms, Catechism, Bible, and church doctrine, it has been
justly said that "the patronage of schools in America by this Society
formed the foremost philanthropic movement in education during the
colonial period."
In the colonies of New Jersey, Virginia, North and South Carolina, and
Georgia, and to some extent in Maryland and New York also, the system of
education in vogue was a combination of private tutors, small pay schools,
and an occasional endowed free school or academy. The tutorial method and
the sending of children to England for their education were possible only
among the wealthier families, and as free schools were not numerous in
these colonies, it follows that public education there was not furnished
to the children at large. Perth Amboy, for instance, seems to have had no
school at all until 1773, and though the Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel sent schoolmasters to Burlington, the results were meager, and
New Jersey remained during colonial times without an educational system
apart from the usual catechizing in the churches. In Virginia education
was largely a private business, for though the Syms and Eaton free
schools, the oldest institutions of the kind in the colonies, continued to
exist, they did not grow either in wealth or in efficiency. This State had
many private schools, such as that at St. Mary's in Caroline County, kept
by Jonathan Boucher, who, in addition to his duties as rector, took boys
at twenty pounds for board and education, or that of William Prentis in
Williamsburg, who, though a clerk at the time and afterwards a merchant,
had a school where he taught Latin and Greek and took tuition fees.
Prentis's pupils read Ovid, Cato, Quintus, Curtius, Terence, Justin,
Phædrus, Virgil, and Caesar, and used a " gradus, " a " pantheon, " a "
vocabulary, " a Greek grammar, and two dictionaries. Sometimes the parents
would advertise for "any sober diligent person qualified to keep a country
school, " guaranteeing a certain number of pupils. That the results were
not always satisfactory, even among the best families, is apparent from
Nathaniel Burwell's unfraternal characterization of his brother Lewis as
one who could neither read, spell, nor cipher correctly, and was in "no
ways capable of managing his own affairs or fit for any gentleman's
conversation."
Prominent planters obtained tutors from England, Scotland, and the
Northern Colonies, and the accounts given by some of these teachers —
Benjamin Harrower at Captain Daingerfield's, Philip Fithian at Councilman
Carter's, and the Reverend Jonathan Boucher at Captain Dixon's — throw
light on the conditions attending the education of a planter's children.
The conditions thus described were probably more agreeable than was
elsewhere the case, for in other instances not only were tutors indentured
servants but frequently were treated as such and made to feel the
inferiority of their position. One John Warden refused to accept the post
of tutor in a Virginia family, unless the planter and his wife and
children would treat him "as a gentleman. " The following letter from a
Virginian to Micajah Perry of London in 1741 must be similar to many
dispatched for a like purpose: "If possible I desire you will send me by
Wilcox a schoolmaster to teach my children to read and write and cypher
[the children were two girls, sixteen and twelve, and a boy five years
old]. I would willingly have such a person as Mr. Lock describes, but cant
expect such on such wages as I can afford, but I desire he may be a
modest, sober, discreet person. His wages I leave to your discretion, the
usual wages here for a Latin master from Scotland is £20 a year, but they
commonly teach the children the Scotch dialect which they never can wear
o$." In addition to his employer's children the tutor was generally
allowed to take other pupils for whom he could charge tuition. Harrower
did this but had considerable trouble collecting the fees, and John
Portress kept a school on Gibbons's plantation in Georgia where he taught
the neighboring children writing, grammar, and "practical" mathematics. In
some instances the tutor acted also as a general factotum for the planter,
even serving as overseer or steward. James Ellerton, the English tutor on
Madam Smith's estate in South Carolina, had as much to do with corn, pigs,
and fences as he did with reading and the rule of three.
A great many New York, Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina boys of the
more wealthy, families were sent abroad for their education. The sons of
Oliver De Lancey of New York went to England, those of William Byrd, 3d,
were at Sinnock's in Kent in 1767, Alexander and John Spotswood remained
at Eton four years, and Samuel Swann of North Carolina studied in England
in 1758. Keith William Pratt, Thomas Jones's stepson, at the age of
fourteen was at Dr.
L'Herundell's school in Chelsea, learning French, Latin, Greek, writing,
arithmetic, drawing, and fencing "as far as it is thought necessary for a
gentleman. " His sister Betty, aged nine, wrote him from Virginia, when he
was eight years old: "You are got as far as the rule of three in
arithmetic, but I cant cast up a sum in addition cleverly, but I am
striving to do better every day. I can perform a great many dances and am
now learning the Sibell, but I cannot speak a word of French."
Despite their English education, few Southern boys were as precocious as
Jonathan Edwards, who began Latin at six, was reading Locke On the Human
Understanding when other boys were lost in Robinson Crusoe,1 and was ready
for college at thirteen; or as Samuel Johnson, later president of King's
College, who was ambitious to learn Hebrew at six, complained of his tutor
as "such a wretched poor scholar" at ten, entered Yale at fourteen, and
capped the climax of a long and erudite career by publishing a Hebrew and
English grammar at the age of seventy-one. Few could quote classical
writers or show such wide reading and extensive knowledge of books as did Cotton Mather or Thomas Hutchinson, but few in
the South were surpassed by the boys in the North in versatility and
knowledge of the world. Many Southern lads went to the Northern colleges
at Philadelphia, Princeton, and New Haven, and a few to Northern schools
to study some such special subject as navigation.
In the Carolinas there were fewer tutors than in Virginia. A large number
of private schools, however, was maintained in Wilmington, Charleston, and
Savannah. There was a provincial free school in Charleston and another at
Childesbury in the same colony, but the free school founded by Colonel
James Inness "for the benefit of the youth of North Carolina" was not
started in Wilmington until 1783. South of Williamsburg there was no
"seminary for academical studies," says Whitefield, who tried to turn his
Orphan House in Savannah into a college in 1764. The private schools which
predominated were promoted by private persons who advertised their wares
and offered a varied assortment of educational attractions such as
arithmetic, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, surveying, dialing,
navigation, gauging, and fortification, but there is reason to believe
that the results which they obtained did not justify the claims of the
schoolmasters. Some, from motives in which desire for a living was
probably a larger factor than zeal for education, announced that they were
ready "to go out, to receive day pupils, or to take boarders."
In the mercantile centers the desire for a practical education was always
strong. As early as 1713 in New York a demand arose for courses in
navigation, surveying, mensuration, astronomy, and "merchants' accounts. "
In 1755 a master by the name of James Bragg offered to teach navigation to
"gentlemen Sailors and others in a short time and reasonable. " In
Charleston, George Austin, Henry Laurens's partner, voiced a general
feeling and forecast a modern controversy when he deemed training in
business more to his son's advantage "than to pore over Latin and Greek
authors of little utility to a young man intended for a mercantile career.
" Here and there throughout the colonies there were evening schools,
as in New York, Charleston, and Savannah; French schools, as in New York
and New Rochelle; besides schools for dancing, music, and fencing, and at
least one school for teaching "the art of manly defense." Whether
shorthand was anywhere taught is doubtful and highly improbable, yet from
Henry Wolcott, Jr., of Windsor and Roger Williams of Rhode Island to
Jonathan Boucher of Virginia and Maryland there were those who were
familiar with it, and occasional references to writings in "characters"
would point in the same direction.
As far as girls were concerned, the opportunities for education were
limited. As a rule they were not admitted to the public schools of New
England, and coeducation prevailed apparently only in some of the private
schools, the Venerable Society's Charity School in New York, and in
Pennsylvania, particularly among the Germans. In 1730 the Charity School
had sixty-eight pupils, twenty of whom were girls. The Moravian girls'
schools at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and Salem, North Carolina, were unique
of their kind. Day schools for young ladies were subsequently opened by
men and women everywhere for the teaching of reading, writing, "
flourishing, " ciphering, French, English, and literature, and for
instruction in embroidery, the making of coats of arms, painting,
"Dresden, Catgut, and all sorts of colored work" and various other
feminine accomplishments of the day deemed "necessary," as one prospectus
puts it, "to the amusement of persons of fortune who have taste."
A boarding school for girls was opened at Norfolk, Virginia, and another
in Charleston, to the latter of which Laurens sent his eldest daughter;
but boarding schools, though not uncommon for boys, particularly after
1750, were rare for colonial maidens, some of whom from the South were
sent abroad, while many others were taught at home. Manuals on home
training were known and used, one of which, The Mother's Advice to her
Daughters, described as "a small treatise on the education of ladies, "
was imported into New England in 1766.
Many efforts were made to instruct and Christianize both Indians and
negroes. Among the best-known of these are the labors of Jonathan Edwards
among the Indians at Stockbridge, of David and John Brainard among those
of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, and of Eleazer Wheelock and his
missionaries among the Oneidas and Tuscaroras and at the Indian school in
Lebanon. There was also an Indian school connected with William and Mary
College; and Massachusetts in 1751 proposed to start two schools for the
instruction of negro boys and girls, to be boarded and taught at the
expense of the colony. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel made
this work a very important part of its program and instructed its
missionaries and schoolmasters "to be ready, as they have opportunity, to
teach and instruct the Indians and Negroes and their children." As a
consequence schools for this purpose were opened in many colonial towns
and parishes. The pioneer, Dr. McSparran, gave much of his time to
catechizing and teaching both Indians and Negroes, and there must have
been others of the clergy doing the same unselfish work. Even Harrower,
the Virginia tutor already mentioned, read and taught the catechism to a
"small congregation of negroes" on Captain Daingerfield's plantation. One
of the most famous efforts of missionary education was that of Commissary
Garden of South Carolina, who started a negro school in Charleston in
1744, to which "all the negro and Indian children of the parish" were to
go for instruction "without any charge to their masters." Funds were
collected, a building was erected, and the school continued for twenty-two
years with from thirty to seventy children, who were taught reading,
spelling, and the chief principles of the Christian religion.
In the realm of the higher education, three colleges, Harvard, William and
Mary, and Yale, were already prominent colonial institutions, but
Princeton in 1753 was still "our little infant college of New Jersey, "
and the College of Rhode Island (now Brown University), and Dartmouth, the
outgrowth of Wheelock's work at Lebanon, were hardly as yet fairly on
their feet. King's College (now Columbia University) and the College and
Academy of Philadelphia (now University of Pennsylvania), organized to
promote more liberal and practical studies, were just entering on their
great careers. The degrees granted by the colleges were Bachelor of Arts
and honorary Master of Arts, to which in some instances Bachelors of Arts
of other colleges were admitted. Higher degrees, such as Doctor of
Divinity, Doctor of Laws, and Doctor of Civil Law, were not conferred by
American colleges but were granted to many a colonist, chiefly among the
clergy, by Oxford, Cambridge, Aberdeen, Glasgow, and, highest in repute,
by Edinburgh. Occasionally a colonist received a degree from a continental
university such as Padua or Utrecht. Though the cost of a degree in those
days ran as high as twenty-five pounds, there was considerable competition
among the New England clergy to obtain this distinction and not a little
wire pulling was involved in the process.
For professional training in medicine, surgery, law, and art, many
colonists went abroad to England, Scotland, and the Continent, where they
studied anatomy, surgery, medicine, pharmacy, and chemistry, read law at
one or other of the Inns of Court in London, or traveled, as did Benjamin
West and John Singleton Copley, to see the leading galleries of Europe.
One of the first to study surgery abroad was Thomas Bulfinch of Boston,
who was in Paris in 1720 studying obstetrics. He declared in his letters
that few surgeons in America knew much of the business and that there was
no place in the world like Paris. "I am studying, " he writes, "with the
greatest man midwife in Paris (and I might say in the universe for that
business)." In 1751 his son Thomas also went over to study pharmacy and
boarded in London at the " chymists where drugs and medicines were
prepared for the hospitals." Later he turned to surgery, rose at seven, as
he wrote his father, walked to Great Marlboro Street, Soho, three miles
away from his lodgings in Friday Street, St. Paul's, where, "I am busied
in dissection of dead bodies to four in the afternoon, and often times
don't allow myself time to dine. At six I go to Mr. Hunter's lecture [in
anatomy], where I am kept till nine. " He tells us that he did chemical
experiments in his chamber and diverted himself by seeing Garrick act. But
the majority of colonial doctors who studied abroad went to Edinburgh. Dr.
Walter Jones of Virginia, one of the most distinguished of them, took his
degree there in 1769, and has left us in his letters a delightful account
of his sojourn in that city. The colonists spoke a variety of languages.
There were thousands who could not write or speak English, particularly
among those who, like the Germans, came from foreign lands and not only
retained but taught their native tongue in America. The Celtic Highlanders
who settled at Cross Creek wrote and spoke Gaelic, and specimens of their
letters and accounts still survive. Dutch continued to be spoken in New
York, and in Albany and its neighborhood it was the prevailing tongue in
colonial times and even long after the colonial period had come to an end.
Many of the New York merchants were bilinguists, and some of them — Robert
Sanders, for example, — wrote readily in English, Dutch, and French. The
Huguenots adapted themselves to the use of English more easily than did
the Germans and Dutch, though many of them in New York and South Carolina
continued to use French, with the result that even their negroes acquired
a kind of French lingo. The advantage of knowing French was generally
recognized and among those who regretted their inability to speak the
language was Cuyler of New York. A knowledge of French was desired partly
as an accomplishment and partly as a business asset, for those who, like
Charles Carroll, had been educated in France thus had a distinct advantage
over their fellows.
Other languages were less generally understood. Moses Lindo, the indigo
inspector of Charleston, was one of those who spoke Spanish, and many of
the Jewish merchants and some of the foreign indentured servants were
familiar with both Spanish and Portuguese. There must have been
interpreters of Spanish in Connecticut in 1752 when there
• was some trouble over a Spanish ship at New London, for much of the
evidence is in Spanish, and Governor Wolcott, who knew nothing of the
language, had the documents translated for him. To a greater extent even
than today, the exigencies of commerce demanded of those trading with
France, Holland, Spain, Portugal, and the West Indies a knowledge of the
languages used in those countries. Many colonists who went as merchants or
factors to Amsterdam, Bordeaux, Lisbon, or the towns of the foreign West
Indies, became proficient in one or more tongues. In all the colonies there were agents and
missionaries who were familiar with Indian speech. In addition to such
professionals as Conrad Weiser, Daniel Claus, Peter Wraxall, and
Wheelock's missionaries, there were others who, though less regularly
employed, acquired in one way or another a knowledge of Indian speech and
were able to act as interpreters. Many of the slaves were African Negroes
who spoke no English at all or only what was called "Black English, " and
for that reason among others the Negro born in America always commanded a
higher price in the market. Among the indentured servants were large
numbers of Welsh who spoke only Gaelic, of English who spoke only their
Cornish, Somersetshire, Lancashire, or Yorkshire dialect, and of Irish who
spoke "with the brogue very much on their tongues. "
Not only were there thousands of men and women in the colonies who could
hardly read and who could only make their mark, but there were also
thousands who had little or no interest in reading or in collecting books.
The smaller farmers and planters, artisans and laborers, confined their
reading to the Bible or New Testament, the psalter or hymn book, and an
occasional religious work such as the Practice of Piety or Pilgrim's Progress. Printed sermons also
were popular, particularly after 1740, when those of Whitefield began to
be circulated. Among the volumes with which the colonial reader was
familiar were the almanacs —the Farmer's Almanac of Whittemore or
Nathaniel Ames in Massachusetts, Wells's Register and Almanac, the
Hochdeutsche-Amerikanische Kalender, Tobler's South Carolina and Georgia
Almanac, and scores of others. From these the colonists obtained all the
scientific knowledge they possessed of sun, moon, tides, and weather
predictions, as well as a great variety of religious, political, and
miscellaneous information, a diverting assortment of jokes, puzzles, and
charades for idle hours, and tables of exchanges, interest, and money
values for the man of business. Except the Bible, probably no book was
held in greater esteem or was more widely read in the colonies in the
eighteenth century than the almanac. In various forms and from the hands
of many publishers it circulated from coast to back country and from Maine
to Georgia and was the colonists' vade mecum of knowledge. It was even
more popular than the newspaper, which, though issued at this time in all
the colonies except New Jersey, was expensive, difficult to distribute,
and very limited in circulation.
Collections of books, other than those on the shelves of the libraries and
in the stocks of the booksellers, were largely confined to the houses of
ministers, lawyers, doctors, wealthy merchants, and planters. Early
libraries, such as those of John Goodburne in Virginia (1635), William
Brewster in Plymouth (1644), and Samuel Eaton in New Haven (1656), were
brought from England and consisted chiefly of theological works, with a
sprinkling of classical authors and a few books on mathematics and
geography. None of these collections contained works of fiction. William
Brewster
had a volume or two of poetry and history. The library of William FitzHugh
of Virginia (1671) included books on history, law, medicine, physics, and
morals, but nothing of literature, essays, poetry, or romance. The law
library of Arthur Spicer of Virginia (1701) was remarkable for its scope
and variety; and the briefs of his contemporaries, William Pitkin and
Richard Edwards of Connecticut, show that they too must have had the use
of the leading law books of the day. Cotton Mather's library began when
the owner was but nineteen with ninety-six volumes, of which eighty-one
were theological and the remainder works on history, philosophy, and philology.
The seventeenth century, both in England and America, was manifestly an
age of heavy literature.
With the reigns of Anne and the Georges, a new literary activity began to
make itself felt. Localities occupied by Quakers, Moravians, Wesleyans,
and Covenanters disclose large numbers of books of denominational piety,
many of them in Dutch, German, and Gaelic. Among those in English were
Ellwood's Life, Penn's No Cross, No Crown, Elias Hook's Spirits of the
Martyrs Revived, Sew-all's History, Barclay's Apology, Fox's Journal, and
Boston's Fourfold State. The increased interest in agriculture, commerce,
law, government, and housekeeping led the colonists to read books of a
practical nature such as The Art of Cooking, The Complete Housewife,
Miller's Gardener' s Dictionary, Longley's Book of Gardening, Burrough's
Navigation Book, Leadbetter's Dialling, Wright's Negotiator, Mathew's
Concerning Computation of Time, Mair's Bookkeeping, and other brochures
relating to commerce, as well as many works, too numerous to be cited
here, on law, local government, the practice of medicine, anatomy,
surgery, surveying, and navigation. There were also many editions of the
British statutes, law reports, proceedings of Parliament, and treatises on
admiralty and marine matters, all of which were imported. Many of the
leading men, particularly in the South, subscribed regularly to the London
Magazine, the Gentleman's Magazine, Rider's Almanac, Eachard's Gazetteer,
the Court Calendar, and other British periodical publications.
There was a close literary relation maintained between England and the
colonies, and newspapers, books, and magazines were constantly sent by
merchants across the Atlantic to their correspondents in America. An ever
widening interest in public affairs was bringing in a steadily increasing
number of histories, biographies, voyages, and travels — such as the
histories of Rapin, Robertson, Mosheim, Raleigh, Clarendon, Burnet, Hume,
Voltaire, and Salmon; the lives of Julius Caesar, Oliver Cromwell, Louis
XII, Marlborough, and Eugene of Savoy; and the voyages of Churchill and
Anson. As time went on, an improving taste on the part of the colonists
for poetry, essays, and fiction, and translations from the classics and
foreign languages began to show itself. Among the chief poets were
Chaucer, Milton, Dryden, and Pope, as well as such minor men as Gower,
Butler, Donne, Waller, Herbert, Cowley, Congreve, and Prior. Among the
essays popular in the colonies were those of Montaigne, Bacon, Swift, and
Bolingbroke, as well as the contributions of Steele and Addison to the
Tatler and the Spectator and of Johnson to the Rambler. In fiction we find
the writings of Richardson, Fielding, Sterne, Goldsmith, and Aphra Behn,
and the romances, The Turkish Spy, The London Spy, and The Jewish Spy; and
in the drama the works of Ben Jonson, Shakespeare, and Dryden. Among the
translations from other languages were the Iliad and the Odyssey,
Cervantes's Don Quixote, Lesage's Gil Blas and Le Diable Boiteux,
Montesquieu's Lettres persanes, and the Mémoires of Cardinal de Retz,
which was amazingly popular. For young people there were Gulliver's
Travels, Robinson Crusoe, The Arabian Nights, and a great abundance of
fables, gift books, and short histories.
As an indication of the range and variety of these colonial collections of
books it is interesting to note that here and there were to be found such
works as Hoyle's Games, Memoirs of Gamesters, Madox on the Exchequer,
Harrington's Oceana, and even More's Utopia. As for law books, Robert
Bell, the publisher of Philadelphia, imported in 1771 a thousand sets of
the English edition of Blackstone's Commentaries, and himself issued a
thousand sets more in four royal octavo volumes, which he sold by
subscription. Henceforth we begin to find, for the first time, copies of
Blackstone appearing in colonial libraries and inventories. In many of the
private libraries were works in French, but rarely in other languages
except among the Germans. Grey Elliott, an English official in Savannah,
was apparently an exception, for he had two hundred volumes "in several
languages," but what these languages were we do not know. In all libraries
were to be found works issued from the various presses in America. The
books of Councilman Carter of Nomini Hall numbered 1503 volumes, and those
of William Byrd, 3d, of which there were more than four thousand in many
languages, constituted what was probably at that time the largest private
library in America.
The practice of lending books was bound to be common in a country where
they were rare and expensive and, where neighborliness was a virtue. A
number of lists which are in existence show the prevalence of the custom.
The catalogue of the library of Godfrey Pole of Virginia (1716),
containing 115 titles, shows that about thirty books were out on loan and
that several others had been lent and returned. In colonial correspondence
we come upon such notes as this from a Dr. Farquharson of Charleston to
Peter Manigault in 1756, in which he says that he is sending back "the
books and magazines and would be obliged for a reading of Mr. Pope's
works."
From lending books as a personal favor it was but a short step to the
establishment of private circulating libraries. As early as the beginning
of the eighteenth century the Reverend Thomas Bray, commissary of
Maryland, had begun his series of "lending libraries" in "the Market
Towns" for "any of the clergy to have recourse to or to borrow books out
of, as there shall be occasion." How many such lending libraries were
actually established it is difficult to say, but there was one at Bath,
North Carolina, and another at Annapolis. There appear to have been,
particularly in the South, other collections quasi public in character,
such as the private library of Edward Mosley of Edenton, which was thrown
open for public use. These libraries differed from the circulating
libraries of such booksellers as Garret Noël of New York and John Mein of
Boston, for example, in that no charge was made for the privilege of
borrowing.
Perhaps the first library that may in a sense be called public was that
owned by the town of Boston and kept in the "library room" of the Town
House. It was started in 1656 and came to an untimely end in the fire of
1747. While it may have been accessible to readers, it was in no sense a
lending library, for its massive folios and their equally ponderous
contents must have made little appeal to any but the clergy. Much more
important as an aid to the spread of good literature were the subscription
libraries which came into existence as soon as books were made less bulky
and more interesting and entertaining. Before the middle of the eighteenth
century associations began to be formed for the buying and lending of
books. Of these the most famous was the Library Association of
Philadelphia, founded in 1731 by a group of fifty persons, headed by
Franklin, which ten years later published its first real catalogue. The
Pomfret Association of Connecticut was established in 1740, that of
Charleston in 1748, and that of Lancaster in 1759. To the last named
Governor Hamilton and many leading Pennsylvanians gave money, globes, and
astronomical apparatus.
Other instances of the spread of this movement were the Georgia Library,
started in 1763, and the Social Library at Salem, Massachusetts,
established some time before the Revolution. But there was at that time in
the colonies no library supported by public funds and similar to the free
public libraries of today.
The bookseller was an important colonial character. Though many of the
colonists imported their own books directly from England, by far the
larger number obtained what they wanted from those who made bookselling a
trade. Merchants and storekeepers in all the large towns and along the
Maryland and Virginia rivers carried in stock books which they obtained
from England and Scotland. The inventories and invoices of these dealers
are always interesting as showing their estimate of the popular taste.
Though John Usher of Boston and Portsmouth was merchant and bookseller
combined, few of the merchants did more than carry a small stock of books
for sale, while on the other hand scarcely any of the booksellers
concerned themselves with trade. They imported and sold books, published
books and pamphlets, bound books, did job printing of all kinds, including
blank forms for bonds, certificates, mortgages, and charter parties. They
also made up and issued the newspapers of the day, served generally as
public printers for their colonies, acted as postmasters in many towns,
kept inquiry bureaus and intelligence offices for their localities, and
were a local source of information. They also sold pens, ink, stationery,
and all sorts of school necessities. The scope of their activities was
perhaps less varied in the North than in the South, but everywhere they
were indispensable in the life of their neighborhood. So important did
these men become in colonial life that when Boston suffered heavily by the
great fire of 1711 her most serious loss was the destruction of nearly all
her bookselling establishments.
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