Catalogue of the Trustees, Instructors, and Students of Amherst Academy November, 1818.
Greenfield, Mass: Denio and Phelps, Printers, 1818.
Price: $1,500.00
About the item
Printed broadside with type ornament border. Folio (16-1/4 x 13-1/4 in.). Small loss at edges, creased from prior folding, backed and mounted on board.
Item #300085
Rare broadside printing of the trustees and male and female students in the 1818 class of Amherst Academy. Founded in 1814 by a group of town leaders that included Noah Webster and Samuel Fowler Dickinson, Amherst Academy quickly rose to prominence as an elite private secondary school. In 1818, the year of this broadside, the trustees of the Academy approved a plan to establish a free school for the teaching of "indigent young men of promising talents and hopeful piety, who shall manifest a desire to obtain a liberal education with a sole view to the Christian ministry." Amherst College opened in 1821.
Founder and trustee Samuel Fowler Dickinson – whose name, along with Noah Webster and others appears on this broadside — was the grandfather of the poet Emily Dickinson. It was in his Main Street house that Emily spent most of her life, and she attended the Academy from 1840-7. The broadside lists eight Dickinson girls and five Dickinson boys enrolled as students, including Emily's father Edward. One Edwards Dickinson is listed as Assistant Preceptor. Of particular interest to this bookseller is the student James Comins, Jr.
Amherst Academy continued to print catalogues of its trustees and students into the 1850s.
