James Cummins Bookseller

[Original manuscript subscription book for the New York Protestant Episcopal Library Society].

(Library Society, New York Protestant Episcopal).

New York: 1814-1818.

Price: $1,500.00

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About the item

207 numbered pages (many blank), comprised of a tabbed surname index at the front, pages devoted to the subscriptions by each member noting dates of payments and annual amounts of subscriptions in the rear. 4to. Contemporary calf, crudely rebacked with buckram, marbled endpapers, heavily worn.

Item #378686

Among the those who founded or were early subscribers to the Library Society were John Pintard, Clement C. Moore, Matthew Clarkson, Philip Hone, Bishop Hobart, Samuel Jarvis, Thomas Swords and others. The Society was founded in 1814 principally to manage the books from Trinity Church library, about 500 volumes housed in Saint Paul's Chapel, which had survived the Revolution after a devasting fire set in September 1776. The Society, largely founded by Pintard, was short-lived as it became part of library of the General Theological Seminary when founded a few years later. See Keep, The Library of Colonial New York, pp. 37-42.