What makes being a librarian so exciting (particularly when it involves historical research) is coming across information which connects little known or forgotten items to notable events or people of the past. Just such a thing happened to me last month while sleuthing about trying to track down the provenance of a series of books for a presentation I was doing. I checked the State Library’s old accession books and did not find the needed volume. So I decided to try the library’s Annual Reports, which often contain acquisitions for a given year. Once again, I was disappointed while searching a conglomerated volume of Reports for 1846-60. However, while paging through this bound together, I came across a section in the Thirteenth Annual Report entitled “A Historical Sketch, by the Librarian.” The librarian at this time was William Coggeshall (1824-1867), a man of many talents, including service as a diplomat, a bodyguard and security agent (in which it is claimed he saved President-elect Abraham Lincoln’s life in 1861), and a writer.
In the past, while having retrieved items requested by patrons in the State Library’s Rare Book Room, I have noticed books by authors who were highly celebrated in their time but now forgotten or ignored. One of these was the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), a social reformer so universally renown in his time, that the French Revolutionaries made him an honorary French citizen in 1789 with the likes of George Washington, James Madison, and William Wilberforce. It is generally acknowledged that he was founder of the utilitarian school of thought, which argued, “It is the great good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong.”
According to Coggeshall’s account, “The first gift to the Library, on record, was by Jeremy Bentham and Robert Owen, through John Quincy Adams, Minister to England.” Among the “books presented by Jeremy Bentham” were the Essay on political tactics (1791), Draught of a new plan for the organization of the judicial establishment in France (1790), Chrestomathia (1816), Panopticon (1791), Panopticon—postscript or additions (1791), Plan of Parliamentary Reform (1817), and View of the Hard Labor Bill (1778). All of these are today in the Rare Book Room. Robert Owen (1771-1858) is better known for being a founder of socialism and supporting utopian communities like New Harmony in Indiana. Yellow Springs Community (1825) and Kendal (now part of Massillon) Community or “Friendly Association for Mutual Interests at Kendal” (1826) were Owenite communities established in Ohio. Unfortunately, the two books donated by him are no longer part of the collection.
What makes these gifts even more interesting is that they were distributed by none other than John Quincy Adams, the future president of the United States. Fortunately, there is correspondence from him while serving as American Minister to England in the Writings of John Quincy Adams (now available on Google Books). Adams, who composed a letter from England to President James Madison in Washington on December 15, 1817, writes: “In the summer of 1816 I received under cover from you a letter addressed to Jeremy Bentham, of Queen Square Place, Westminster, a person then known to me only by reputation. I called at his house to deliver the letter, but he was then absent in the country and I left the letter to be forwarded to him.” The letter continues: “A few weeks afterwards a friend of his who resides with him, a Mr. Koe, came to my residence which was a few miles out of the city, with the compliments of Mr. Bentham who was still absent, and a packet addressed to you, containing the first and second parts of a work which he was then publishing entitled Chrestomathia, which packet I soon after forwarded with my dispatches to the Department of State; and which was I hope duly received by you.” Chrestomanthia is the name of one of the gifts to the State Library “by Jeremy Bentham…through John Quincy Adams, Minister to England.”
I can only surmise that this is probably the copy of Chrestomanthia which now resides in the State Library’s rare book collection. But our story continues as Adams finally gets to meet the man he has known only by “reputation.” “I heard no more of Mr. Bentham until last spring [1817], when about two months before I left England, I found it necessary to remove into London to make the preparations for my departure. Mr. Bentham, who had in the meantime returned to his town residence, then called upon me, and from that time I saw him three or four times a week, and had frequent conversations with him upon the subjects of political economy, legislation, Chrestomathic instruction and other topics, with which his mind was over occupied, but upon which the singularity of his humor, and the cheerful benevolence of his disposition, afforded an inexhaustible fund of entertainment, as the accumulated mass of knowledge furnished a store no less copious of instruction.” While Adams’ picture of Bentham was hardly that of Dickens’ fictional utilitarian Thomas Gradgrind of Hard Times—who saw life as “a case of simple arithmetic”—his philosophy was found a bit too rigoristic for many Anglo-Americans. As the 19th century progressed, utilitarianism’s influence correspondingly waned. Perhaps Adams was foreshadowing its demise when he had to inform poor Bentham, “with regret,” that his reform proposal to President Madison in “his letter of 1811” was “an impracticable undertaking.”
NOTE. The State Library of Ohio was established as the “Ohio State Library” in 1817. The name was later changed to avoid any with confusion with The Ohio State University Libraries.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
COAL-MINER REGISTRY BEING COMPILED FOR SOUTHEASTERN OHIO MINERS
In a feature article, the Columbus Dispatch reported that a registry of coal miners in southeastern Ohio as far back as the 1800s will be available next year. Such a database looks to be a major watershed for tracing this region's mining families. During my years as a genealogy librarian, I was often asked by researchers about the availability of information on their African-American, English, Welsh, and Scottish forefathers who were miners in Perry, Jackson, Vinton, and other counties in the Hocking Valley region. Today, as the article states, the "Little Cities of Black Diamonds--the towns where the mining families lived--have declined or disappeared as technology and demand have caused their numbers to drastically fall. There is an excellent and well-documented book by Professor Ivan M. Tribe entitled Little Cities of Black Diamonds: Urban Development in the Hocking Coal Region, 1870-1900 (1988) which tells their story. At the State Library of Ohio, we have the Report of the State Inspector of Mines in our State of Ohio Government Documents collection. These annual reports are full of important information for the historian and genealogist alike. Inspection reports for every active mine in the state are printed in every year of the Report. Of greatest interest to the genealogist will be the annuals from 1874 to 1913 containing information on those who were injured or killed in mining accidents. If you have been researching your mining ancestor, what sources (including online) have you found helpful? Let us know. Please take a look at the article "Registry digs into mining history" by Mary Beth Lane in the October 22, 2007 issue of the Columbus Dispatch.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
THE STATE LIBRARY OF OHIO’S FUTURE PLAN IS TO SERVE OHIO’S GENEALOGISTS VIRTUALLY
Last April, the State Library of Ohio’s genealogy collection of 25,000 books and several thousand microfilm was transferred to the Columbus Metropolitan Library. However, that did not mean the library would no longer be serving the genealogy community. Like libraries, family history researching is changing with the advances of the electronic information age. In the 1980s, genealogists began using software programs on their home computers to organize their family research. By the beginning of the 21st century, 24% of those canvassed by the Pew Internet and American Life Project tracking survey were using the internet for researching their ancestors. Today, we are at a crossroads. While a google search for “genealogy” yields 37,500,000 results, there’s still a lot more out there in books and microforms which haven’t graced the internet. Perhaps the watershed event will occur in 2012, when the Family History Library completes the digitization of its entire microfilm collection of nearly 2 ½ million reels and makes it all available on the web like FamilySearch http://www.familysearch.org/. However, this does not include the many items of interest to genealogists which are only available in print and manuscript in thousands of large and small libraries and archives. Our library contains such a holding.
The State Library of Ohio has been the regional (or full)
The Ohio state documents collection includes the Ohio General Assembly biographical directories, the Laws of Ohio, the Journals of the Ohio House and Senate, the Executive Documents, military rosters, institutional records, Ohio Secretary of State reports, lists of professionals, accident (industrial, mine, and rail) reports, and many others. Finding government documents of interest to the genealogist is like discovering veins of gold in an almost endless mine. The information may be highly specialized but often is rich in detail. For example, you will not find a list of all Ohio industrial workers for a given year in the Report of the Department of Inspection of Workshops, Factories and Public Buildings but you will find a section on “Accidents Reported During the Fiscal Year” which gives the date of the accident, name of person injured, age of person, by whom employed, city or town, and the cause and severity of the injury. I have compiled a preliminary bibliography of
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