The Mercantile Library Association (1820-1952) 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 ...
was an organization dedicated to operating a subscription library, reading room and lecture series. Members included
James T. Fields
James Thomas Fields (December 31, 1817 – April 24, 1881) was an American publisher, editor, and poet. His business, Ticknor and Fields, was a notable publishing house in 19th century Boston.
Biography
Early life and family
He was born in ...
and
Edwin Percy Whipple. Although the association had a relatively long history, its heyday occurred in the mid-19th century, particularly the 1840s and 1850s.
History
The association was organized in 1820, "to establish a library and reading room for the use of young men engaged in mercantile pursuits ...the first association of the kind in the United States." Founders included
Theodore Lyman, J.G. Gibson, Samuel A. Otis, N.A. Barrett, Thomas Gorham, James T. Blanchard, Lynde M. Walter, Charles J. Johnson, Edward Codman, Henry A. David and Samuel W. Pomeroy. Initially the library operated from rooms in Merchants' Hall, Congress Street, and later moved to
Harding's buildings on
School Street (1836-1841), then to
Amory Hall on
Washington Street.
The association underwent highs and lows through the years. After a decade of minimal growth, the association engaged in a successful fundraising effort in 1835, expanding its revenue and membership. Major benefactors included
Abbott Lawrence. In 1836 "a severe calamity was experienced in the destruction, by fire, of the cabinet of curiosities, and several valuable paintings. Many of the books were also very much injured by water." Thereafter membership and activities were re-energized. In 1842 "the
Boston Marine Society deposited with the Association their extensive cabinet of curiosities, containing about two thousand rare and valuable specimens."" The association was officially incorporated in 1845.
In 1840
Edward Everett spoke to the association on "Accumulation, Property, Capital, Credit."
[Edward Everett]
Importance of practical education and useful knowledge
being a selection from his orations and other discourses. Marsh, Capen, Lyon, and Webb, 1840; p.307+ In 1844
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 ...
gave a lecture entitled "The Young American."
[Ralph Waldo Emerson]
Nature, and other miscellanies
Milford, 1922; p.254+. In 1847
Charles Sumner
Charles Sumner (January 6, 1811March 11, 1874) was an American lawyer and statesman who represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1851 until his death in 1874. Before and during the American Civil War, he was a leading American ...
spoke on "White Slavery in the Barbary States." In 1849,
Horace Mann addressed the association’s 29th Anniversary with a, “A Few Thoughts for a Young Man.” Other speakers included
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.;
[Celebration of the 124th anniversary of the birthday of Washington. February 22, 1856. Boston: Watson's Press, 1856.] poet
Park Benjamin Sr.;
George S. Boutwell; Thomas Greaves Cary;
Rufus Choate;
Caleb Cushing;
George Stillman Hillard;
William F. Sturgis; and
Robert Charles Winthrop.
By 1849, some 1,145 members belonged to the library. Library collections included 5,819 volumes. Around 1851, the library occupied quarters on Province Street, at the corner of Bromfield Street. By 1861 until at least 1868, the library had moved to Summer Street.
In 1877 the association gave its collection of 18,000 books to the South End branch of the
Boston Public Library
The Boston Public Library is a municipal public library system in Boston, Massachusetts, founded in 1848. The Boston Public Library is also Massachusetts' Library for the Commonwealth (formerly ''library of last recourse''), meaning all adult re ...
, located in the basement of the association's building on
Tremont Street
Tremont Street is a major thoroughfare in Boston, Massachusetts.
Tremont Street begins at Government Center, Boston, Massachusetts, Government Center in Boston's city center as a continuation of Cambridge Street, and forms the eastern edge of ...
and Newton Street. According to one historian, after 1881 "the Association, deprived of its library, entered upon a steadily less successful career as a social club that came to a dusty and inglorious end in 1952."
Lecturers and performers
;1830s:
*
Edward Everett
*
James T. Fields
James Thomas Fields (December 31, 1817 – April 24, 1881) was an American publisher, editor, and poet. His business, Ticknor and Fields, was a notable publishing house in 19th century Boston.
Biography
Early life and family
He was born in ...
;1840s:
*
Park Benjamin Sr.
*
George W. Bethune[30th Annual Report or 1849of the Mercantile Library Association of Boston. 1850]
*
Elihu Burritt
* Thomas Greaves Cary
*
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 ...
*
Edward Everett
*
Ezra S. Gannett
*
Mrs. Frances Anne Kemble
* T.S. King
*
George Lunt
* E.L. Magoun
*
Horace Mann
*
Wendell Phillips
*
Geo. Putnam
*
William F. Sturgis
*
Charles Sumner
Charles Sumner (January 6, 1811March 11, 1874) was an American lawyer and statesman who represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1851 until his death in 1874. Before and during the American Civil War, he was a leading American ...
*
George Vandenhoff
*
Edwin P. Whipple
*
Richard S. Willis
* Leonard Woods Jr.
;1850s:
*
Henry Ward Beecher[31st Annual Report or 1850of the Mercantile Library Association of Boston. 1851]
*
Henry W. Bellows
*
Thomas H. Benton[American Broadsides and Ephemera, Series 1]
*
Frank P. Blair Jr.
*
Rufus Choate
*
Thomas M. Clark
*
Orville Dewey
* David Dudley Field
*
George Stillman Hillard;
*
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
* G.P.R. James
* Thomas S. King
* George P. Marsh
* Samuel Osgood
* Francis T. Russell
* Andrew L. Stone
* James S. Thayer
* Edwin P. Whipple
;1860s:
*
N.P. Banks
*
George S. Boutwell[Mr. Boutwell in Boston; Lecture before the Mercantile Library Association--The "Transition Period of the United States." New York Times, December 30, 1869; p.1.]
*
Peleg W. Chandler
*
Henry F. Durant
*
Edward Everett
* J. Hanley Grimes
* George H. Hepworth
* Miss Angela Starr King
* Benjamin F. Thomas
See also
*
Mercantile Library (disambiguation)
*
Center for Fiction (New York Mercantile Library)
References
Further reading
*
William Frederick PooleCatalogue of the Mercantile Library of Boston Printed by J. Wilson & Son, 1854. (Reviewed i
''Norton's Literary Gazette,'' Jan. 15, 1855
* Howard M. Wach. "Expansive Intellect and Moral Agency": Public Culture in Antebellum Boston. Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Third Series, Vol. 107 (1995)
External links
Boston University Records of the Mercantile Library Association of Boston.
{{Authority control
1820 establishments in Massachusetts
Clubs and societies in Boston
Libraries in Boston
Defunct organizations based in Massachusetts
1952 disestablishments in Massachusetts
Libraries disestablished in the 20th century
19th century in Boston
Libraries established in the 1820s