This item has been adopted: In 1905, the Chautauqua School of Nursing lectures bound together here comprised the seminal textbook of a would-be registered nurse in a time when the profession was still ill-defined. The volume aimed for “success in the truest sense.” This top-bound volume belonged to a Miss Sara Batchelder, who left many penciled notes and drawings throughout the text.

This item has been adopted.

In just two entries in his expense account book in the fall of 1839, John S. Williamson noted that he "Traded 250 Trees to Leonard Wheeler for gold watch" and "Sold to James Nelson $20 worth of trees at 1 1/2 cts per Bud." That's a lot of trees!

His account book documents the work of Williamson, a Mulberry and fruit tree agent from New Jersey, as he traveled in Pennsylvania and the Midwest in the 1830s and 40s, a period that paralleled the peak and demise of the silk worm and mulberry tree planting craze in America. It adds to the Society's rich collection of travel accounts as well as collections in natural history. It also provides a window onto the rapid expansion and financial prosperity of white society during and in the aftermath of Indian Removal when Indigenous communities were expelled from lands between the Illinois and Ohio Rivers.

This item has been adopted.

M. C. Cooke (1825-1914) was an English botanist and mycologist who founded the Society of Amateur Botanists in 1862. This manual lists a series of useful terms for the budding botanist along with illustrations to help amateurs make their own discoveries in the garden.

This item has been adopted.

Adopt a piece of US and APS history! In 1821, John Quincy Adams, who was then Secretary of State and who went on to become the sixth President of the United States, donated this copy of his Report on Weights and Measures to the American Philosophical Society. According to the APS Minutes, he had consulted sources and specimens from the APS Library while researching the report. Like Thomas Jefferson before him, Adams argued that Congress should adopt official, universally agreed-upon standards of weight and measurement to be used across the United States. Only 600 copies of the report were printed for the use of the Senate and the Department of State. Conservation treatment will focus on replacing the severely deteriorated spine and sewing structure of this rare book, while retaining the original sewing and leather fragments as historical evidence.

This conservation treatment was adopted by Margaret Levi and Robert Kaplan.

This 80 page volume with the full title The History of Esculent Fish And an Essay on the Breeding of Fish, and the Construction of Fish-Ponds, by the Honourable Roger North features 18 copper-engraved plates. Even the spine is decorated with gilt fish! Along with the engravings are descriptions of various species from Carp to Pike. An extra bonus are the unsigned pencil drawings in the final rear endpapers of bearded gentlemen.

This was adopted by Jonathan Fox & Suzanne Markel-Fox.

These pamphlets promoted the scientific expeditions to the Antarctic by Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd in the 1920s-1930s. They include photos and descriptions of the wind, icebergs, and whales that the Expedition encountered along their way.

Records of scientific expeditions and related materials form a large and growing part of the Library & Museum’s collections. These pamphlets came to the APS as part of a collection of ephemera related to Antarctic Exploration in the early 20th century. Among the over 30 items in this collection are other promotional pamphlets, scholarly records, and letters that document a wide fascination with polar exploration between 1908 and 1936.

This item has been adopted by Jay Stiefel.

This 15,000-word manuscript essay on Philadelphia history was written by William Biddle Atkinson, a fifteen-year-old student at Philadelphia’s Central High School. Most of the essay focuses on the history of Native Americans around Philadelphia and in the mid-Atlantic region and offers a sympathetic reading of the distant past of various tribes.

Biddle's essay is a valuable source for understanding the history of education of American youth in the mid-19th century and allows researchers to see what historical sources were taught in schools and available to students. Atkinson would later attend Jefferson Medical College and became a physician and author.
 

This manuscript was adopted by Dr. Robert M. Hauser in memory of Taissa S. Hauser and in honor of Patrick Spero.

This first-hand travel account of Caleb Atwater, an early anthropologist interested in North American earthworks, is notable for both its details on life and travel in the early 19th century but also for its inclusion of a 25-page Dakota language vocabulary. It adds to the Library & Museum's rich collection of travel accounts and also to materials that relate to over 650 different Indigenous cultures of the Americas.

This book has been adopted by Jerry and Paula Sabloff.

The mid-19th century was a time of innovation in beekeeping and this first edition volume presents a careful and effective summary of the practice that combined the author’s practical experience and his familiarity with the writings of experts. Chapter titles include “On the Simplification of the Process of Managing Bees,” “Natural History of the Bee,” “Cottage System Explained,” “On Swarms,” “The Old and New Methods of Unionizing Stocks Explained,” and “General Directions for the Extraction of Honey and Wax.”

Bagster was an innovator himself with his new invention of “The Ladies’ Safety Hive Examined and Explained”—a new hive design prompted by his wife’s concern over being stung.

This item has been adopted by David Skorton and Robin Davisson.

In the early years of the American republic, agricultural improvers engaged in something of a merino sheep craze in an attempt to improve livestock farming in the northeast with the introduction of merino sheep. This brief, first-edition volume from 1811 by Samuel Bard (1742-1821) contributed details of British and Scandinavian practices. Bard was best known for his work on midwifery and as an assistant surgeon to George Washington, but this little volume also included suggestions from his own experience with sheep at his Hyde Park farm.

This item has been adopted.

In 1860, Richard Burton, the famous British explorer of Africa and the Middle East, turned his investigations to the American West, traveling through Sioux territory to Salt Lake City where he remained for a month. He interviewed Brigham Young twice and wrote sympathetically on the Mormon faith. He continued on to California with stops in Carson City and Virginia City along the way. This first edition of the classic Western overland narrative is in its original green cloth covers.

This book was adopted by Conrad K. Harper.

One of just a handful of books in the 19th century on kidney diseases—collectively called Bright’s disease after English physician Richard Bright in 1827—this newly-acquired 1879 volume is an English translation of lectures originally given in French in 1878. The volume is notable not only for its contributions to the history of medicine, but also for its impressive colored engravings.

This item has been adopted by Dr. & Mrs. Paul L. Bechly.

A fascinating piece of ephemera operating at the juncture of science and religion in the early 19th century, this brief pamphlet discusses the Great Comet of 1811 from the perspective of Christian doctrine. The piece takes the form of a conversation between a minister and one of his parishioners, who remarks, “This Comet, Sir, looks very grand; and I seem to feel something dreadful, while I am looking at it.” Acknowledging that the comet should rightly inspire fear and awe of “His Almighty Power,” the minister also offers comfort that it will do no harm before launching into a theological interrogation of God-inspiring fear.

This item has been adopted.

Obsessed with astronomy? Sponsor the conservation treatment of a rare third edition of Nicolaus Copernicus’s revolutionary (excuse the pun) work De Revolutionibus Orbium Caelestium, which placed the Sun rather than the Earth at the center of the known universe, and described the planets’ orbits. This copy of the book, published in Amsterdam in 1617, is especially unusual because it contains extensive notes and diagrams by an unknown seventeenth-century English writer who used Copernicus’s calculations to establish linkages between the Egyptian and Julian calendars. Conservation will focus on mending the text, reinforcing the book’s sewing, and reattaching the volume’s parchment binding.

This conservation treatment has been adopted by Dr. Paul S. Bechly & Mrs. Elizabeth B. Wells.

The APS’s Library holds the largest collection of Darwin correspondence outside England along with 4,800 printed items in many languages. This volume, On the Origin of Species in Amharic, adds to those holdings as it is the only translation of this work into an Ethiopic language, the first translation into any African language, and the only edition published on the African continent.

This book has been adopted.

Sponsor a rare piece of Frankliniana! This pamphlet is the 1760 first edition of Benjamin Franklin’s Way to Wealth, here called Father Abraham’s Speech and introduced by Poor Richard. The pamphlet shows its age, with discolored paper, a homemade cover, and several generations of sewing repairs. This historical evidence is important enough that the book will not be disbound and washed, a conservation treatment that can be used to clean and strengthen old paper. Instead, the creased and tattered edges of the leaves will be painstakingly flattened and mended using transparent paper and minimal moisture. The loving repairs of previous owners will be left intact.

This conservation treatment was adopted by Jacqualyn E. Hillegass.

Translation of the Bible became a significant project of the American Bible Society’s missionary work with the Winnebago in the early 20th century. This particular translation was the work of John Stacy, who became an assistant to Missionary Jacob Stucki after the latter arrived in Wisconsin in 1884. The volume adds to the APS’s large and growing collection related to Indigenous languages in North America.

This item has been adopted by Dr. & Mrs. Paul L. Bechly

Asa Gray's report on the botany of the Wilkes Expedition includes a text volume and an illustrated folio atlas with 100 engraved plates of plants collected by the first scientific expedition conducted by the United States Navy. It analyzes the “phanerogamia,” or flowering plants, collected during the four year voyage. The report on “cryptogamia,” or flowerless plants, was never completed.

The publication history of the expedition’s scientific reports was fraught with difficulties, which led to small original print runs. The official report, published in Philadelphia, had a run of 100 copies, while the unofficial version published in New York, which the APS copy is a part of, had a print run of 150 copies. APS Member Asa Gray, arguably the most important botanist of 19th-century America, filled in when the original expedition botanist, William Rich, submitted a report Wilkes found to be subpar.

The APS’s connections to the Wilkes Expedition are deep and having this report in the Library’s collections fills a significant gap in our holdings.
 

This item was adopted by Pat and Steve Benkovic.

This abridged catechism in Cree, written for children by the Roman Catholic priest Jean Pierre Guéguen, also contains an alphabet, primer, and six pages of prayers.

After completing his seminary education, Guéguen was a missionary in eastern Canada from 1867-1899 and became the official missionary for the Saint-Maurice missions on what is now the Ontario-Quebec border. The APS has an extensive collection of printed religious material in Native American languages from the 19th century.

This book was adopted by Rowena and Larry Matthews.

In the forward to this volume, Harry James writes, “‘Once Upon a Time’ is a favorite way to begin the legends of the white man. HALIKSAI is the ‘Once Upon a Time’ of the Hopi.” This collection of legends, as told to James, was published in 1940, most of the stories appearing previously in the pages of The Desert Magazine. Its 28 pages include legends like “The Journey Up From The Underworld,” “The Turtle and the Coyote,” and “Why Peaches Are Sweet.” They’re accompanied by black & white illustrations from water-colors by Mootzka, the Hopi artist, and line cuts from drawings by Don Louis Percival.

HALIKSAI joins a growing collection of Indigenous-related printed materials in the Society’s collections.

This book has been adopted.

Matthew A. Henson (1866-1955), the son of sharecropper parents who were free Black Americans before the Civil War, was arguably the first person to reach the North Pole. In this account, he writes of his participation in the 1909 Peary expedition. Though some disputed the claim that the expedition successfully reached the pole later in the 20th century, Henson's account claims that he was the first of their party to reach the pole on April 6, 1909. This first edition of Henson's account, published in 1912, features an introduction by Booker T. Washington and a forward by the expedition's leader Robert E. Peary.

This book was adopted by Claire L. Parkinson.

Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859, APS 1804), arguably the greatest naturalist of the 19th century, was the first to develop an isotherm map to chart average temperatures around the globe. Humboldt described the concept of an isotherm in 1816 as a “curve drawn through points on a glob which receive equal quantity of heat.”

This map—System der Isotherm-Kurven in Merkator’s Projection von Humboldt—is a version printed around 1850.

This item was adopted by Irakli G. Mirzashvili and Tatjana M. Hocke-Mirzashvili.

What is published now becomes part of the historical record of the future and a recent collection development focus has been to collect materials on Indigenous self-representation—people telling their own stories, about all parts of lived experiences, including books for all ages. These children’s books were published by Indigenous-owned presses.

This item was adopted by George J. Ahern.

Filled will tales of derring-do, this early 19-century children’s book details the adventures of bold naval commander of the American Revolution John Paul Jones, accounted a hero by some and a pirate by others. This newly-acquired printing opens with a hand-colored folding frontispiece depicting the captain shooting his lieutenant for attempting to surrender. 

This book was adopted by Robert M. Hauser.

This die-cut volvelle star chart from 1929 was intended to help users correctly identify stars in the northern sky. Pitched as “a novel accurate and simple device for locating and naming the prominent stars and constellations,” the chart is surrounded by illustrations of the night sky with the moon and other planets and includes instructions for how to orient and rotate the chart for use.

This item has been adopted.

Printed in late 1776 for sale in the early part of 1777, this almanac combined astrological information with verse, lore, homilies, recipes, and information on the American Revolution.

This work features a full-page map of the New York City area, "A View of the Present Seat of War, at and near New-York," which shows General George Washington's position on Manhattan. It also contains Low's extended "Address to the Tories," and a poem beginning "Let tyrants rage …" A native of Massachusetts, Low was a prolific almanac writer and publisher, working on these practical guides for the masses from 1762 until his death in 1808.

This item has been adopted by Barbara Bowen Oberg.

Lithography—a printing process whereby an image in oil-based ink is transferred from stone—was developed in the late-18th century, but color lithography was still rather new when this book was made in 1858, making this volume particularly remarkable. Color lithography required a separate stone for each color; the main challenge was to keep the images aligned for each new stone. Both the text and illustrations were produced entirely by lithography so the complexity of the illustrations in this Report required more than 400 stones—so many that the creator lacked enough for the entire book and needed to regrind and reuse stones between pages. Most pages in the book have borders and the transcriptions and translations are ornamented with colorful Egyptian motifs. The first edition of 400 copies appeared in December 1858 and sold out immediately. This copy belonged to Supreme Court Justice Joseph P. Bradley.

The three student authors translated the Rosetta Stone when a plaster facsimile of the Stone was presented to the university. The hieroglyphics of the original inscription are reproduced with the hieratic and Greek. Each member of the committee wrote his contributions in his own hand.

This item has been adopted.

Calling all opera lovers! This warped parchment binding contains a 1771 French translation of Piccini’s 1760 comic opera La Buona Figliuola, whose libretto is based on Samuel Richardson’s novel Pamela. The engraved sheet music in this volume was arranged by M. Baccelli and dedicated to the Duc de Richelieu. Based on the French spine and cover labels, which are tooled with “La Bonne Fille” and “Madame Brillon,” respectively, this copy of the translation belonged to Anne Louise Brillon de Jouy (1744–1824), an accomplished composer and musician who fascinated Benjamin Franklin. Conservation treatment will relax and flatten the book’s parchment binding, and the volume will be placed in a protective box to prevent future warping.

This conservation treatment has been adopted.

During the cold winter that American troops spent in Valley Forge in 1778, blankets were a necessity. This receipt is a small piece of evidence of that reality. The receipt shows that 7 blankets were ordered for Colonel Heman Swift’s Regiment. Swift (1733-1814) was known as General Washington’s Colonel and went on to become an Associate Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court of Errors (now known as the Connecticut Supreme Court) from 1790 to 1802.

This item has been adopted by The Morsberger Family.

When, in late 1772, British General Thomas Gage ordered the evacuation of troops from Fort Pitt, the surrounding colonial settlers shared their alarm with their lieutenant governor, Richard Penn. In response, Penn sent this request to the legislature, where it was promptly rejected.

Pittsburgh colonists feared “Incursions of the Indians,” but it was instead a delegation sent by Virginia Royal Governor Lord Dunmore that would take control of Fort Pitt, renaming it Fort Dunmore. It would become a staging ground for Dunmore’s War of 1774 against Native Americans in the area.

This item was adopted by Jay Stiefel and Robert Hauser.

High egg prices are shocking customers and making news in 2023, but this price list from 1900 boasted some pretty expensive eggs, too! Distributed by Franklin Tanner Pember (1841-1924) these specialty eggs for the avian enthusiast ranged from $0.03 for a robin to $2,00 for a white-fronted goose ($1.00 to $66.60 in 2021 dollars respectively). Pember was a successful businessman-turned-philanthropist and this pamphlet advertised eggs as “all perfect, side blown, well identified specimens with data &c. and mostly in original nests.” They were organized by type aligning with the Smithsonian’s catalogue.

This item was adopted by Jerry and Paula Sabloff.

In the mid-20th century, the Bond Astronomical Club, founded by APS Member and noted astronomer Dr. Harlow Shapley (APS 1922) gathered regularly in Cambridge, MA. The Club maintained an active program of annual dinners, summer picnics, trips to observatories, and presentations featuring prominent speakers—several of whom were also APS Members including Cecelia Payne-Gaposhkin (APS 1936) and Owen Gingerich (APS 1975)—to discuss cutting-edge discoveries in physics and astronomy. Among their records that APS recently acquired are these star maps from 1932 (from observations made at the Valley View Observatory in Pittsburgh, PA).

This item has been adopted.

This 12-page letter from Stella Shepard (née Bardwell) from South Pasadena, California celebrates the bounty and beauty of Southern California in the spring of 1889. Writing to her sister-in-law Samanta Maria “Minnie” Howard (née Chandler), the wife of horticulturist Arthur B. Howard (leading American strawberry breeder of his day), Shepard extolls the singing birds and flowering plants: “just think of seeing over 1000 Callas in full bloom!... The blossoms stand up 4 ft from the ground… Why I could write a whole week describing the different flowers, and then say nothing. I can’t describe them. You can have no idea of the wild flowers even.”

Shepard appears to have been in Pasadena for about a year, possibly having gone for her health after the death of her husband writing, “But how I get very lonesome sometimes, and wish I had some one to love, and care for me, just a little wee bit. If it was only the fashion for women to seek as well as be sought, there would not be so many lonely ones in the land… but no, women must stand back and wait. O well, I’m waiting…”

This item was adopted by Kathleen Peck.

Over the course of the 19th century most European countries adopted the metric system. This 1852 broadside was intended to help those in Spain prepare for that transition scheduled to go into effect January 1, 1853. It provided tables of metric measures and weights and their equivalents in the old system.

This item has been adopted by Dr. & Mrs. Paul L. Bechly.

This letter demonstrates the efforts of John Vaughan, the long-serving Librarian of the APS, in securing manuscripts for the institution during his nearly forty-year tenure. Vaughan wrote to Julius Timoleon Ducatel, professor of chemistry and geology at the University of Maryland and an APS Member, asking for help in securing the material used by John Burk and Louis Hue Girardin to write their four-volume History of Virginia, published between 1804 and 1816.

Vaughan notes that this material would be a good supplement to the Lee family papers and material donated by Thomas Jefferson on the Revolutionary era. Vaughan was unsuccessful in acquiring the manuscripts, but the Library does hold a copy of Burk’s and Giradin’s text.

This item was adopted by Adam Najarian.

Willis Howard Ware (1920-2013), an American computer pioneer who worked with John von Neumann at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton on early computers, was a founder in the field of computer security. But before he accomplished all of that, he studied at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1930s-1940s while the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) was being developed. This small collection of papers contains letters from the administration, report cards, and even an invitation from John Presper Eckert Jr., who, along with John Mauchly, designed the ENIAC and presented the first course in computing topics (the Moore School Lectures).

This item has been adopted by Paula and Jerry Sabloff.

Physics and Medicine Of The Upper Atmosphere offers the first detailed study of the Aeropause—the region of the Upper Atmosphere that challenged the physical limitations of human pilots—and was the standard reference of high altitude physics, aviation, and space medicine. This first edition copy is noteworthy as it is inscribed by Assistant Editor William Randolph Lovelace II to Colonel R. Harrison. Harrison was an Army pioneer of Aviation Medicine and Lovelace was decorated by the Army Air Force during World War II for personally performing life-threatening experiments in high altitude parachute jumps. Lovelace was also the first head of NASA Life Sciences where he played a key role in the selection of astronauts for Project Mercury.

This book was adopted by Claire L. Parkinson.

Early in his career, while teaching in Scientific Gymnasium, Swiss-American zoologist Emil Witschi (1890-1971) published this natural history story book for children, illustrated by his students. Just a few year after publishing Von Blumen und Tieren in Bern, Switzerland, Witschi would continue his career in the United States, going on to the University of Iowa to produce close to 200 scholarly works and train at least 40 students. Much of his zoological research focused on mechanisms of sexual differentiation and development of vertebrates.

This item has been adopted.

Did you know that it is customary in astronomical photography for the south to be oriented on the top of a plate (as opposed to maps on the earth where north is on top)? This 1968 volume, Exploring Space with a Camera, was commissioned by the United States Air Force and its 230 photos include examples taken by Mercury and Gemini astronauts, as well as images taken from Lunar Orbiter, Surveyor, and several other robot spacecraft.

This book has been adopted. by Marilyn S. Fishman.

American naval hero of the Revolutionary war, John Paul Jones served as an inspiration for youth literature for decades following his death. This small, 4.5 x 3.13 inch, paperback life is another fun example newly-acquired for the APS collections. Likely printed in England, the book was less interested in the war itself, about which “so much has already been said, that we feel no inclination whatever to renew the controversy.” Instead, it focused on sensationalized details of the seemingly larger-than-life inspiration of one who had “risen from the lowest conditions to the most exalted stations in life.”

Brightly colored Easter eggs line the shelves of stores in early spring—in 1890, S. L. Willard & Co. was trying to meet the demand among collectors of birds’ eggs and other oölogical supplies. Building on APS’s rich collections related to ornithology, including a complete double elephant folio set of Audubon’s The Birds of America, this newly-acquired catalogue provides a late-19th-century insight into the business of birds. The 8-page pamphlet includes a price list of birds’ eggs, nests, skins, and miscellaneous supplies for the bird enthusiast, naturalist, or egg collector.

The men working on the Bevatron show the massive scale of this particle accelerator built at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 1954. The antiproton was discovered there in 1955, resulting in the 1959 Nobel Prize in physics for Emilio Segrè (APS 1963) and Owen Chamberlain. Stamped “Information Division, Radiation Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley,” these photos add to the Library’s growing collections in the history of science, technology, and medicine.

As the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence rapidly approaches in 2026, APS is adding to its collections nearly every version of that founding document that it does not already hold. This version, attributed to George Richards, took some artistic license in July 1793 and was described as “long and laborious” in its 24-page interpretation and expansion on the original.

As the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence rapidly approaches in 2026, APS is adding to its collections nearly every version of that founding document that it does not already hold. This version was printed at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876 on the old Ephrata printing press that boasted “On this press the Declaration of Independence was printed in 1776.” 

In Little Pills: An Army Story, R. H. McKay details his experiences as a United States Army Medical Officer headed west just after the American Civil War. He served as an Assistant Surgeon in the U.S. Army and his travels took him through Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arkansas.

Space Destination Services was a company formed in the 1990s to provide private services to space. These fund-raising documents pitched their plan to provide consumables—food, beverages, medicine, water, and clothing—to the planned International Space Station Alpha. The company received a few patents for its products and raised money, but ultimately failed to get a NASA contract and folded shortly thereafter.

Ever wondered why your body starts to slow down as you age? According to Hobart Bradstreet it is due to the settling of your spine. This short book walks the reader through his theory and provides a series of stretches that he developed called “Spine Motion” to help combat this settling. The book has three black-and-white illustrations of the part of the human spine, as well as photographs in which Bradstreet is shown performing the stretches as described.

This book has been adopted.

This Moravian confirmation manual was printed in the Labrador Inuktitut language in 1927 and joins other materials related to Indigenous languages and cultures in APS collections that relate to over 650 different Indigenous cultures throughout the Americas.

This item has been adopted.

This Letterbook of Colonel Augustus James Pleasonton, Pennsylvania militia commander in the late 1830s and early 1840s, documents a heated dispute between Whigs and Democrats for control of the state House of Representatives in December 1838. Factions disputed which newly-elected members should be seated in that body with Democrats accepting the ruling of election judges and the Whigs supporting the return of the secretary of state. Mobs gathered in Harrisburg and state officials called the militia, which was given magazines of buckshot to quell the eleven-day “rebellion,” giving the incident its name.

The letterbook records Pleasonton’s handling of the bloodless conflict and his years-long defense against accusations of mishandling funds meant to equip the militia. Pleasonton was a general of militia during the Civil War, defending Philadelphia from attack, and his brother Alfred was a Union cavalry general during the war.
 

This item has been adopted.

William “Amos” Wilson (ca. 1762-1821) became a figure in the folklore of late 18th and 19th-century Pennsylvania who “excited so much curiosity in the western part of the state.” In 1785, his sister, Elizabeth was convicted of infanticide for the deaths of her twin sons and sentenced to hang. Wilson, convinced of his sister’s innocence, acquired a pardon for her from the Governor, but arrived too late, “less than five minutes after the fall of the fatal drop.” Grief-stricken, Wilson withdrew from the world and in 1802 took up residence in a cave outside of Harrisburg where he lived out the last 19 years of his life. Wilson’s story was memorialized in this brief, 24-page volume The Pennsylvania Hermit.

This item has been adopted.

The custom of “letter money” dictated that for every letter that a shipmaster brought to a port and delivered to the postmaster, he should receive the sum of one penny. Ship letter-money originated in the late 17th century as an incentive to deliver the mail from port to post office. The Port of Philadelphia saw more charitable uses for these funds. This 1797 broadside encouraged funds to be given to the Society for the Relief of Poor and Distressed Masters of Ships, a charity founded in 1765.

This item has been adopted.

This 31-page pamphlet also includes a large fold-out railroad map for the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railway. From the first decade of the 20th-century, it is one of many promotional pamphlets circulating in the aftermath of the Dawes Act passed in 1887. Also known as the General Allotment Act, the law broke up reservation land, held in common by members of a tribe, into small allotments to be parceled out to individuals resulting in significant land loss from Native American communities. This addition to the collection provides important contemporary context for collections at the APS that document Indigenous languages and cultures.

This item has been adopted by James Halpin Hill.

In August 1780, wagon master John Thompson of Bucks County, PA, gave this receipt to Quaker Thomas Smith in exchange for Smith’s horse “for the use of the United States.” Notably, Smith was part of a committee appointed in 1778 by the Buckingham Meeting that declared, along with their Quaker commitment to nonviolence that “we cannot be instrumental in the setting up or pulling down of any government, but it becomes us to show forth a peaceable and meek behavior to all men, and to live a useful, sober and religious life, without joining ourselves with any party in war.”

This item has been adopted.

Since opening in 1935, the Griffith Observatory has become one of the most-visited public observatories in the world. In the 1950s they sought to reach amateur astronomers near and far through print. This astrorama printed in 1952 is a volvelle that the user can adjust to observe visible constellations over time and includes a list of visible stars and constellations.

This item has been adopted.

The APS’s Library’s Colonel Richard Gimbel Collection of Thomas Paine Papers, a heterogenous mix of more than 4,500 items written by, to, or about Thomas Paine is likely the largest such collection to exist and the Society is always looking to add to it.

This curious short volume is attributed to Thomas Paine, but the true author is almost certainly Samuel York Atlee (1809-1895), who would have been about 17 years old when it was written (well after Paine’s death in 1809).

This item has been adopted.

In the wake of the American Revolution, British math textbooks simply would not do for budding American mathematicians. Nicolas Pike, a Harvard graduate and school teacher, saw this as an opportunity and in 1788 published his New and Complete System of Arithmetic—Composed for the Use of the Citizens of the United States, the first such volume to be published in the U.S. This letter to a prominent Connecticut merchant, announced that Pike had completed his book of Arithmetic, that it was “already adopted as a Collegiate Book in some of the New England Universities,” and described its binding and the prices of copies being offered to booksellers. The book would go through six editions over the next 50 years.

This item has been adopted.

Best known as an engineer who developed one of the earliest refrigeration devices, Thomas Moore (APS 1809) wrote this letter to Cadwalader Evans, Jr., then the President of the Schuylkill Navigation Company, to offer his expertise on improving that river’s canal. Moore cautioned against the proposed method for creating a dam, explaining that “when a dam is extended quite across a River the powers of art fairly overcome the resistance of the Stream… we must go hand in hand with nature or be content to have our views continually thwarted.”

This item has been adopted.

This 19th-century sketchbook includes about 30 astronomical illustrations done by a schoolgirl from Greenwich, most likely Connecticut. The stars in the sketches are depicted according to relative magnitude and signaled with bejeweled costume inlays.

This item has been adopted by Marna C. Whittington.