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American Antiquarian Society

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American Antiquarian Society

The American Antiquarian Society (AAS) has been committed to sharing America's stories for more than 200 years.

We collect, preserve, and make available for study the pre-twentieth-century printed record of what is now the U.S.

09/14/2026

Join us Tuesday, September 15 at 7:00 pm ET with Melissa Range for "Printer’s Fist: A Poetry Reading." In person and virtual viewing options available. Register at americanantiquarian.org/programs-events/printers-fist-poetry-reading-melissa-range

09/13/2026

Upcoming October deadlines!

Fellowships provide recipients with the opportunity for a period of uninterrupted research, reading, and collegial discussion at the Society.

📝 Fellowships for Creative and Performing Artists and Writers
📖 for historical research by artists, writers, film makers, journalists, and other persons whose goals are to produce imaginative works dealing with pre-twentieth-century American history, literature, and culture
⏰ Deadline: October 5, 2026

📝 Hench Post-Dissertation Fellowship
📖 from such fields as history, literature, American studies, political science, art history, music history, and others relating to America in the period of the Society's coverage.
⏰ Deadline: October 15, 2026

Link in bio for more information and application materials

09/10/2026

It’s national family meals month! 🍳🥗🍗🥧

This illustration from an 1861 imprint titled First Picture-Book for Our Little Ones has an English title, but its interior text is printed entirely in German. It reflects the high-quality lithographed children’s books issued from Philadelphia in the mid-nineteenth century. This two-page spread captures the living room of a farmhouse and the numerous activities that took place, including the daily eating, cooking, prep and churning of meals (🧈), but also clothes washing and conversation. Despite all that’s going on, everyone and everything is in their right place, down to the mouse caught in the cat’s paw! 🐾

09/07/2026

The Society is closed today, Monday September 7, in observance of Labor Day.

This image of a dipper-style, early 20th century excavating shovel with posing workers was photographed by Theodore Clemens Wohlbrück (1879-1936), a photographer in Worcester, Massachusetts. This collection comprises glass plate negatives of towns in the county, including landmarks, buildings, churches, businesses, lakes, bridges and landscapes. This glass plate was taken around 1905 in Holden, Massachusetts of these unnamed workers taking a break at the worksite.

09/04/2026

Join us for a hybrid program on Thursday, September 10, from 7:00 - 8:00 pm, “Suitable: The Surprising History of the Plain Black Suit” by Chloe Chapin. Register at americanantiquarian.org/programs-events/suitable-surprising-history-plain-black-suit

09/01/2026

This school exercise book by Barker Burnell (1798-1843) is a great overlap for election day, the first of September (still longing for those beach days…) and those getting their school studies back in order!

Burnell lived in Nantucket, Massachusetts and served as an elected member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1821-1822, and as a member of the Massachusetts Senate in 1823, 1825-1833, and 1838. This schoolbook was kept by him in 1813 when he was fifteen years old.

The book opens with "Mercators Sailing” problems with “A Ship in lat. 49°57' and lon. 5°14W Sail S Westward until her departure from the meridian..” He also practices ship log entries, such as a hypothetical “Journal of a Voyage from London to Madeira & Teneriffe.” Burnell's work is interesting, but living on an island, it is no surprise that he incorporated sailing lessons into his schoolwork!

08/25/2026

Oof! It is back to school week for so many!

Images of female dunces are fairly rare in children’s books, but here is an example of a school girl standing on the dunce stool. Not only does she have to stand on a special stool, but she also has to wear a mask bearing the sign “dunce,” no doubt serving as a dramatic reminder to schoolmates.
The image, taken from Fisher & Brother’s Merry Making Riddles, was published in both Philadelphia and Baltimore around 1855; it also includes a riddle:

My 1st is in sea, but not in land.
My 2d is in ocean, but not in sand.
My 3d is in hill, but not in vale.
My 4th is in mountain, but not in dale,
My 5th is in oak, but not in tree,
My 6th is in lake, but not in sea.
My whole is a place of improvement.
�
Answer: SCHOOL.

08/20/2026

🧰 Do you have your lunch box ready for back to school?

The creator of this box, Robert Gair (1839-1927) revolutionized paper box and bag manufacturing in the 19th-century.

Born in Scotland, Gair moved to the United States at the age of 14; he fought in the American Civil War and later started his business on Chambers Street in Manhattan where he printed retail goods. In 1870, while running paper bags through a printing press to print a label, he noticed that every bag was slit across its face. He examined the press and found that the type rule had been set too high as it was cutting and printing the bags. Gair saw that he could cut and print a bag with one operation, so he invented machinery where paper and pasteboard could be creased, cut, and printed at once. Shortly after, he made his first folding box. Gair is credited with having changed the appearance of stores in many lines of retail trades.

This foldable lunch box features an image of the (100-room!) Brock House Hotel in Enterprise, Florida (built in 1854 and torn down in 1937). This lunch box also has a striped string for holding your lunch!

08/17/2026

It is national thrift shop day!

While some of our acquisitions are found in thrift and second hand stores, today’s post is about the secondhand trade in the 1850s in Connecticut. This advertising card is for furniture, but the owner, James Minor (-) was also in search of beds, bedding, Crocker, brass, copper, zinc, old pewter, lead, Britannia (metal), glass and bottles. Exchange could be either for furniture or cash. Minor's second hand furniture shop was on Crown Street in New Haven.

08/13/2026

🫲 It’s international Left-handers day!��

For those of us who are left handed, living in a right hand world can be challenging. But imagine being left handed in the early 19th-century, when using your left hand was a problem that needed to be corrected!

Mary Palmer Tyler (1775-1866) included a section on handedness in her guide to child rearing, offering advice to parents on teaching children to use their right hand.

The section includes this poem:

Now, when his little hands from bo***ge free,
restless expand in new-born liberty
You teach the Child, with reprehension light,
In preference to the left to use the right.

Today we can read this advice and wonder why a child’s preferred hand was such a concern, but many parents were worried when they found out their child was left-handed. All that said, Tyler was more reassuring than her advice would suggest. While she described it as a “defect,” she also writes that “all anxiety on the subject is superfluous.”

Tyler’s Maternal Physician was first published in 1811 in Vermont and was the first comprehensive guide to raising children written by an American woman. This second edition, published in 1818, reprints the same advice.

Address

185 Salisbury Street
Worcester, MA
01609

Opening Hours

Monday	9am - 5pm
Tuesday	10am - 5pm
Wednesday	9am - 5pm
Thursday	9am - 5pm
Friday	9am - 5pm

Website

http://americanantiquarian.org/

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