RIHS Ink: Why So Old

While most of the Society’s library materials start with 1636, the date of the founding of the Providence, the Printed Collection has a stellar set of London Imprints that pre-date the colony.  These were mostly acquired from the George L. Shepley Library in 1938 and from an 1891 donation by Daniel Berkeley Updike of Wilkin Updike, Esq.’s Library—two collecting giants of Americana and printing history.

While the pre-colonial imprints may at first seem out of place here, the titles and topics reveal an unparalleled description of the environment in England from which our own Roger Williams evolved his ideas and then fled persecution.

RIHS London Imprint 1593

The earliest known item in the Printed Collection is: Daungerous Positions and Proceedings :  published and practised within this iland of Brytaine, vnder pretence of Reformation, and for the Presbiteriall discipline. (London : Imprinted by Iohn Wolfe, 1593.)

This is an anti-Presbyterian tract rejecting the new disciplinarian model of church government and attributed to Dr. Richard Bancroft who eventually became the Bishop of London and then Archbishop of Canterbury from 1604-1610.

The printer John Wolfe (1548?–1601) was jailed twice and repeatedly had his printing materials seized by authorities for his controversial opinions and for the titles he chose to print. He was an outspoken advocate of printing privileges, which was a hotly debated issue of the Elizabethan era.

The battle of who was allowed to print and what they could print continued to the 1640’s in which Roger Williams and his printer (and eventual Providence resident) Gregory Dexter were deeply embroiled.

The risks of printing controversial literature continued as attested to in that neither Dexter nor Williams signed his fiery plea for religious tolerance, The bloudy tenent, of persecution, for cause of conscience, discussed, in a conference betweene Truth and Peace. :VVho, in all tender affection, present to the hight court of Parliament, (as the result of their discourse) these, (amongst other passages) of highest consideration. ([London: s.n.], 1644).

The first issue read the “Bloudy Tenet” and most copies were ordered burned by the then ruling Presbyterian Party in England. Had Williams not been on his way back to Rhode Island he may have been burned along with them.

RIHS London Imprint 1644

The RIHS collection of London Imprints provides intense context for the intellectual environment that produced Roger Williams, drove the English Civil War and made printers into warriors.

~Phoebe Bean, Printed Collection Librarian

Song of Rhode Island

Picture a lonely night in Omaha. Maybe it’s raining. And the heart of one soul longs for…..Rhode Island! This little treasure was rediscovered in our ongoing retrospective cataloging of the old classification systems. Five verses of pure Rhode Island glee.

RIHS Printed Collection M1658 .R4 T56 1920

And the medium for this creativity? A flimsy piece of hotel stationary from the Hotel Plaza in downtown Omaha, Nebraska.   Bernard J. Tiemann of New York  penned songs for all the states and published them in 1905 in his Songs of our States and Nation.

Verso

But who was this mysterious typist? Did he or she type from memory or a text?  Why was he or she in Omaha? What brought Rhode Island to their mind at that time in 1920? How did the scrap make it back to the RIHS shelves? Historical Collections often create as many questions as they answer. But 91 years after the fact we can still enjoy the humanity of a reconstructed moment.

~psb~

Newspapers Conquer America!

Ever dreamed you could visualize the growth of the Newspaper Trade across the country? Well our day has come. This video is based on data from the Library of Congress U.S. Newspaper Program, of which RIHS was a key participant during the 1980′s and 1990′s.

The Growth of US Newspapers, 1690-2011 from Geoff McGhee on Vimeo.

The first newspaper printed in the Rhode Island Colony was the short-lived Rhode-Island Gazette, printed in Newport by James Franklin from September 27, 1732 to May 24, 1733.  Providence’s first newspaper was William Goddard’s Providence Gazette, launched October 20, 1762 and ceased on May 11, 1763 “in the face of poor support and general indifference on the part of the people of Providence”  (McMurtrie, Beginning of Printing in R.I., 1935). The oldest still in print is the Providence Journal, evolved from the Providence  Daily Journal, and General Advertiser which was established in 1829.

The RIHS Library holds the largest collection in the State of Rhode Island Newspapers on microfilm and in hard copy.  Examples of newspapers in over ten different languages are in the collection representing the communities that have built the tapestry of Rhode Island’s people. Newspapers are still collected here at the Library today for posterity and for the research needs of future generations.

psb

Who’s the Mann?

People are most familiar with Horace Mann (1796-1859) for his dedicated work for public education. But he applied the same fire to his orations against the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 and the debate on extending slavery into the newly acquired territories of what would become California and New Mexico.

RIHS Printed Collection

Speech of Mr. Horace Mann, on the right of Congress to legislate for the territories of the United States, and its duty to exclude slavery therefrom. Delivered in the House of Representatives, in Committee of the whole, June 30, 1848. (Boston: William B. Fowle, 1848.)

Raised a strict Calvinist on a farm in Franklin, MA, he educated himself at his town library and with a tutor. “The Father of American Education” then attended Brown University in Providence and was valedictorian of the Class of 1819. Biographer George Allen Hubbell even credits Brown with helping to solidify his beliefs in universal rights: “Those who made the charter of Brown University had decided that it should be a liberal institution, in which no religious test were to be required; but for all members there was free, full, absolute and uninterrupted liberty of conscience.” He left Brown a committed Unitarian.

This Rhode Island connection can probably account for the trove of newly “re-discovered” Mann imprints at the RIHS Library. Most notably rare copy of the Speech of Honorable Horace Mann, delivered at Lancaster, Mass., May 19, 1851, on the Fugitive Slave Law. (Boston: Office of the Commonwealth [Charles List & Co.], 1851.)

RIHS Printed Collection

Mann resigned as Secretary of the Mass. Board of Education in order to fill John Quincy Adam’s seat in Congress. In Washington from 1848 to 1852, he devoted himself to opposing slavery and was known as the “Whig and Free Soil Congressman from Massachusetts”. The Mann Imprints at RIHS range from 1823 to 1854, encompassing his vibrant education reports, these explosive, taunting abolitionist speeches as well his inaugural address as the first president of Antioch College. In Mann’s words to the graduating class three weeks before his death:

“Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”

Horace Mann, between 1844 and 1859 (Library of Congress)

[PSB]

Further Reading

“Oratory and Learning: Horace Mann at Brown,” by Kathleen Edgerton Kendall. Rhode Island History, Vol. 30(Winter):(1971). The Rhode Island Historical Society.

“Horace Mann at Brown,” by Jonathan C. Messerli. Harvard Educational Review, 33(3):285–311 (1963)

Horace Mann. By Jonathan Messerli (New York: Knopf, 1972)

Horace Mann, educator, patriot and reformer: a study in leadership.               By George Allen Hubbell.  Philadelphia: 1910)

Horace Mann, 1796–1859: A Bibliography. By Clyde S. King.                         (Oceana Publications, 1966)