Salem Social Library Explained

The Salem Social Library (1760-1810) or Social Library in Salem was a proprietary library in Salem, Massachusetts. "Twenty-eight gentlemen ... subscribed 165 guineas. ... A Boston minister, [Jeremy Condy],^[1] was employed to buy the books in London and the library opened in a brick schoolhouse May 20, 1761, with 415 volumes including gifts given by members. The revolution was a bitter blow to many of the gentlemen who had founded the library. Many of the proprietors fled to England. ... In 1784 the library made a new start in new quarters in the new ... schoolhouse. Here they remained about 15 years, the schoolmaster acting as librarian."^[2] "In 1797 they became incorporated;"^[2] Edward Augustus Holyoke, Jacob Ashton, Joseph Hiller, and Edward Pulling served as signatories.^[3] "There were over 40 proprietors when in 1810 the library was turned over to the [Salem] Athenaeum."^[2]

Subscribers

• Samuel Barnard^[4]
• Thomas Barnard
• Samuel Barton Jr.
• Joseph Blaney
• Joseph Bowditch
• William Browne
• Francis Cabot
• Joseph Cabot
• S. Curwen
• Richard Derby
• William Eppes
• Samuel Gardner
• Samuel Gardner Jr.
• Stephen Higginson
• E.A. Holyoke
• William Jeffry
• Daniel King
• John Nutting Jr.
• A. Oliver Jr.
• Timothy Orne
• Benjamin Pickman
• Benjamin Pickman Jr.
• Ebenezer Putnam
• William Pynchon
• Nathaniel Ropes
• William Vans
• W. Walter

See also

• Salem Athenaeum, successor to the Social Library of Salem

Further reading

• Bylaws and regulations of the incorporated proprietors of the Social Library in Salem. 1797. (Includes catalog)
• By-laws and regulations of the Proprietors of the Social Library in Salem ; with a Catalogue of the books belonging to the Library by Proprietors of the Social Library in Salem. Salem: Printed by Thomas C. Cushing, 1809.
• "The Social Library."

External links

• Phillips Library, Peabody Essex Museum. Records of the Social Library, 1760-1810.

Notes and References

1. James Raven. London booksellers and American customers: transatlantic literary community and the Charleston Library Society, 1748-1811. Univ of South Carolina Press, 2002
2. Library Journal, April 1910
3. An Act for incorporating certain Persons by the Name of The Proprietors of the Social Library in Salem, February 7, 1797. Private and special statutes of the commonwealth of Massachusetts, Volume 2. Printed for the state, by Manning & Loring, 1805
4. H. Wheatland. Sketch of the Social and Philosophical Libraries. Proceedings of the Essex Institute, 1857