Mechanic Apprentices Library Association (Boston, Massachusetts)
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__NOTOC__ The Mechanic Apprentices Library Association (1820–1892) of
Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...
,
Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...
, functioned as "a club of young apprentices to mechanics and manufacturers ... whose object is moral, social, and literary improvement." Some historians describe it as "the first of the kind known to have been established in any country." Founded by William Wood in 1820, it also had an intermittent formal relationship with the larger, more established
Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association The Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association (est.1795) of Boston, Massachusetts, was "formed for the sole purposes of promoting the mechanic arts and extending the practice of benevolence." Founders included Paul Revere, Jonathan Hunnewell, ...
. In its heyday, roughly 1820s-1850s, the Apprentices Library " etquarterly ; ... adnearly 200 members, and a library of about 2000 volumes; connected with which asa reading room, gratuitously supplied with the best newspapers and magazines of the city, and a cabinet of natural history. In addition to these advantages, the association adlectures and debates in the winter, and a social class for the study of elocution in the summer."


History

Funds supporting the library derived from member dues and private donations. "Among the early donors were Governor Gore, Mr. William Phillips (who made a donation of $100), ndadmiral Sir Isaac Coffin. ... The merchants of Boston gave a valuable set of Rees' ''Cyclopedia''."Boston Almanac. 1838
John Adams John Adams (October 30, 1735 – July 4, 1826) was a Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father and the second president of the United States from 1797 to 1801. Before Presidency of John Adams, his presidency, he was a leader of ...
offered a donation in 1820. In 1844
Daniel Webster Daniel Webster (January 18, 1782 – October 24, 1852) was an American lawyer and statesman who represented New Hampshire and Massachusetts in the U.S. Congress and served as the 14th and 19th United States Secretary of State, U.S. secretary o ...
, as president of the
Boston Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge The Boston Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (est. 1829) in Boston, Massachusetts, was founded "to promote and direct popular education by lectures and other means." Modelled after the recently formed Society for the Diffusion of Usefu ...
, gave $500 "for the purchase of books." Other donations were encouraged, for instance in local newspapers: "The mechanic apprentices of Boston desire ''information''. They have not, of themselves, the means to possess it. Will our liberally-disposed citizens give it to them?" Readers in the library included future Boston mayors
Joseph Wightman Joseph Milner Wightman (October 19, 1812 – January 25, 1885) was an American politician who, from 1861 to 1863, served as the seventeenth Mayor of Boston, Massachusetts. Early years Wightman was born the son of an immigrant tailor at Elli ...
and
Hugh O'Brien Hugh O'Brien (July 13, 1827 – August 1, 1895) served as the mayor of Boston from 1884 to 1888. O'Brien is notable as Boston's first Irish and Catholic mayor, having emigrated from Ireland to America in the early 1830s. O'Brien was the edito ...
. The Apprentices Library moved several times through the years. It "first opened in the old State House." Later it operated from Franklin Avenue (ca.1823), Congress Square (ca.1832),
Tremont Row Tremont Row (1830s-1920s) in Boston, Massachusetts, was a short street that flourished in the 19th and early-20th centuries. It was located near the intersection of Court, Tremont, and Cambridge streets, in today's Government Center area. It e ...
(ca.1838), Cochituate Hall on Phillips Place (ca.1856), Washington Street (ca.1861), and West Street (ca.1868). In addition to maintaining the library, the association arranged lectures "every winter, ... generously made free to the public, as well as to the members." In 1839
John Quincy Adams John Quincy Adams (; July 11, 1767 – February 23, 1848) was the sixth president of the United States, serving from 1825 to 1829. He previously served as the eighth United States secretary of state from 1817 to 1825. During his long diploma ...
delivered a lecture to the association on the topic of the late
James Smithson James Smithson (c. 1765 – 27 June 1829) was a British chemist and mineralogist. He published numerous scientific papers for the Royal Society during the early 1800s as well as defining Calamine (mineral), calamine, which would eventually be ...
's bequest "to the United States of America, to found at Washington, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men." Other lecturers included
William Ellery Channing William Ellery Channing (April 7, 1780 – October 2, 1842) was the foremost Unitarianism, Unitarian preacher in the United States in the early nineteenth century and, along with Andrews Norton (1786–1853), one of Unitarianism's leading theolo ...
(1840),
Ralph Waldo Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803April 27, 1882), who went by his middle name Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, minister, abolitionism, abolitionist, and poet who led the Transcendentalism, Transcendentalist movement of th ...
(1841),,
Rufus Choate Rufus Choate () (October 1, 1799July 13, 1859) was an American lawyer, orator, and Senator who represented Massachusetts as a member of the Whig Party. He is regarded as one of the greatest American lawyers of the 19th century, arguing over a ...
(1857), and
Herman Melville Herman Melville (Name change, born Melvill; August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance (literature), American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works ar ...
(1859). As of 1850:
The association consists entirely of apprentices to mechanics and manufacturers -— of course embracing only minors. ... The affairs of the institution have been very ably and successfully conducted by its youthful members. The association occupies two rooms in Phillips Place, opposite the head of
School Street School Street is a short but significant street in the center of Boston, Massachusetts. It is so named for being the site of the first public school in the United States (the Boston Latin School, since relocated). The school operated at variou ...
; the one for reading and lecture-room (say 30 feet by 40) the other (say 30 by 15) for library and conversation room. The library is well selected to promote the intellectual culture of the class for whom it was intended. The reading department contains the principal newspapers and periodicals of the city, and many from different parts of the country, and is in a most flourishing condition. A cabinet of minerals and curiosities has been commenced; an annual course of free lectures is supported by the institution; an elocution class has been formed, the exercises of which consist in the reading of original compositions, declamation, and debate. ... The library is open three hours every Tuesday and Saturday evening. About 10,000 volumes are lent out annually.
Upkeep of the library presented challenges. By 1881, the once "flourishing institution" languished. "The decadence of the apprentice system has had a very damaging effect on it, so that it is impossible for apprentices, in sufficient numbers, to be found who will take interest enough in the old society to continue the work from which many men, now leading citizens and manufacturers, reaped so much benefit. The library, once numbering six thousand or seven thousand volumes, has, for months, been stowed away in a dusty room, affording no benefit to anybody. The library "was discontinued only when such action was made necessary by the lack of interest and patronage which was occasioned by the gradual abolition of the apprenticeship system."Manual Training Magazine (Peoria, Illinois), July 1921


References


Further reading

* "Societies for promoting useful knowledge, in Boston, Mass." In
Mechanics' Magazine and Register of Inventions and Improvements
v.1, no.5, May 1833
Report of the Committee on the Library
in relation to the Mechanic Apprentices Library Association: made at a meeting of the Mass. Charitable Mechanic Association, April, 1859. Boston: Printed at the Office of the Bunker Hill Aurora, 1859. * "Notes: the Mechanic Apprentices Library Association." Boston Evening Transcript, Feb 11, 1899. ("I was a member ...")


External links


WorldCat
Mechanic Apprentices Library Association.
Google news archive
Articles about the Boston Apprentices Library * Massachusetts Historical Society
Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association Records, 1791-1995
Guide to the Collection. {{Authority control 1820 establishments in Massachusetts 1892 disestablishments in Massachusetts 19th century in Boston Libraries in Boston Defunct organizations based in Massachusetts Former library buildings in the United States Libraries established in the 1820s Libraries disestablished in the 19th century