Allegheny College
Special Collections of Pelletier Library

Observations by Edwin Wolf

Section III.

The character of the Isaiah Thomas bequest can best be judged by the fact that the two authors most strongly represented in the collection were Oliver Goldsmith with his Vicar of Wakefield, Roman History, Miscellaneous Lyric Poems, Logic, Miscellaneous Thoughts, and Sermons. It was merely a selection from a bookseller's stock, one which the Rev. Dr. Bentley, against the background of his intellectual standards, described in 1793 as "chosen from the common demand and contain few curious books".

On February 3, 1820, Thomas, writing pessimisticallyto Alden about raising money for Bentley Hall at Alleghany- "the good people of Salem, and the government of a neighboring university and also other literary institutions are nto pleased that the Dr. did not remember them in his will"- stated that it was his intention "to leave by will, or forward to you during my life, a selection from my Book stock, to the amount of 400 or 500 dollars, for your college library." Thomas made up his mind more quickly than his letter implied. On May 20 he sent Alleghany his donation of 422 volumes (a modern count was 433 volumes, of which 78 are now missing) valued at six hundred dollars and a pair of globes valued at fifty dollars.

This was not the end of Thomas's connection with Alleghany. On October 28, 1821, the shrewd collector of Americana suggested to Alden that he exchange any Winthrop books "written and printed in the Colonies before the Revolution...for more modern literature." Apparently, Alden kept this in mind for on December 6, 1825 he sent Thomas some books, including a Hebrew Bible, an odd volume of Purchas and "old pamplets," in return for a forty-seven-dollar credit against the purchase of textbooks.

That there were good texts for a college library in Thomas donation can not be gainsaid. But that this was no more than a selection of a little bit of the most popular with an admixture of remainders is obvious. While the lot did not have the distinction of the Bentley and Winthrop collections, it was probably more practically useful. There was a taste of everything:medicine, military science, cookery, fiction, history, manners and a considerable amount of theology. There were a Boston 1806 edition of Pilgrim's Progress, Jonathon Edwards' Works in eight volumes, Worchester, 1808, Hume's History of England in six volumes, Philadelphia, 1796, Jedediah Morse's Geography made easy, Boston, 1816, and William Penn's Fruit's of Solitude, New York, 1813. There was an edition of Shakespeare, Boston, 1813. Charles Brockdon Brown's Arthur Mervyn, Philadelphia, 1799, and Susanna Rowson's Trials of the Heart, Philadelphia, 1795, together with American editions of some of the more popular English novels of the day, lent a lighter touch to the Worcester publisher's selection. A detailed listing of the works would serve little purpose. Today, the volumes are interesting chiefly as imprints. In their day, they formed a representative, miscellaneous collection of a popular nature.