1773: Harvard Orders British Books Amidst Strife with Britain, Delivered by a Ship that Later that Year was Central to the Boston Tea Party

Harvard Orders British Books Amidst Strife with Britain, Delivered by a Ship that Later that Year was Central to the Boston Tea Party

This list of books shipped to Harvard College by London bookseller Thomas Longman in 1773 illustrates the dependence the American colonies had on Great Britain for scholarship immediately before the Revolutionary War. The list includes 77 titles with the costs of each, many of them multiple volumes. Another fourteen titles have notes such as "reprinting," "not yet published," "out of print," "never published," and "new editions with many additions and corrections by ye Editors," which indicate why they were been shipped.

The volumes shipped include a wide array of disciplines, including theology, jurisprudence, history, natural history, astronomy, voyages and exploration, medicine, and drama. The individual titles ranged in price from 10 pence for mathematician John Landen's 14-page "Observations on Stewart" [Animadversions on Dr Stewart's Method of Computing the Sun's Distance from the Earth (1771)] to £4..12 for William Robertson's The History of Scotland, 2 vols. (1759). Among the intriguing titles are John Huddlestone Wynne, A General History of the British Empire in America, 2 vols. (1770); copies of the periodicals Gentlemen's Magazine (1771), London Magazine, and The Critical Review, or Annals of Literature; and volume 5 (1771) of Catherine Macaulay, A History of England from the Accession of James I to that of the Brunswick Line, 8 vols. (1763-1783).

The bill included 15 shillings for a trunk; 1 shilling, 6 pence for a case; and £1 for insurance. With shipping charges and a deduction of 5 percent for "ready Money," the total bill was £50. The books arrived aboard the ship Dartmouth, built in 1767 in Bedford Village, Massachusetts, and owned by Quaker Joseph Rotch (1704-1784) and his three sons, titans of the whaling industry. Captain James Hall and the Ship Dartmouth that he commanded likely arrived in Boston late in June 1773. In the province of Massachusetts Bay, he obtained a cargo of whale oil from the Rotch ships, which he delivered to London, perhaps in August or September 1773.

On November 28, 1773, Captain Hall and the Dartmouth arrived in Boston after a voyage of eight weeks from London, carrying 114 chests of tea. The Dartmouth was one of seven ships that the East India Company sent to the American colonies in September and October 1773. Four were bound for Boston and one each for New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston. At the latter locations, protesters forced the tea consignees to resign or return the tea to England.

In Boston, however, Royal Governor Thomas Hutchinson convinced the tea consignees, two of whom were his sons, not to back down. The day after the arrival of the Dartmouth,thousands of people gathered at the Old Soth Meeting House for a mass meeting led by Samuel Adams. The meeting passed resolutions urging Captain Hall to return to England without paying the duties required by the Tea Act. In early December two more tea ships?Eleanor and Beaver?arrived in Boston.

On the evening of December 16, a group of from 30 to 130 men, some dressed as Mohawk warriors, boarded the three vessels and dumped all 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor, in what came to be known as the Boston Tea Party.

[HARVARD]. Thomas Longman, Manuscript Document, List of Books Shipped to Harvard College, April 17, 1773, London, England. 3 pp.

Excerpt
"London, April 17th 1773, Ship'd on board the Dartmouth Captain Hall for Boston In New England by Thos Longman Bookseller in London, One Trunk and one Case of Books for the use of Hartford College, and are Consign'd to Mr Thos Hubbard Treasurer of the said College."

Historical Background
In 1723, the Harvard library contained 3,500 volumes, divided into two collections, one for "common use" and another for valuable and restricted volumes. In January 1764, a devastating fire began in the library and spread, destroying Harvard Hall. Most of the library collection, then numbering approximately 5,000 volumes, was lost. Only about 400 books that were on loan or in boxes, waiting to be unpacked, survived.

In the wake of the fire, the library collection grew primarily by donations. Between 1764 and 1766, the second (and current) Harvard Hall was built, and the library collection occupied half of the second floor. When the Provincial Congress commandeered the buildings of Harvard College as quarters for the Continental Army in 1775, the books were packed for wartime storage. In June, they were moved to private homes in Andover and then Concord. After the British evacuated Boston in March 1776, the Provincial Congress allowed the College to return to Cambridge, and the library returned to Harvard Hall.

Thomas Longman (1730-1797) was a nephew of Thomas Longman (1699-1755), who founded the Longman publishing house in 1724. At age 23, he was taken into partnership by his uncle and inherited the business when his uncle died. He greatly extended the business into the provinces and became a large exporter of books to the American colonies. At his death, his oldest son Thomas Norton Longman (1771-1842) took over the family's lucrative publishing business.

Thomas Hubbard (1702-1773) was born in Boston, graduated from Harvard College in 1721, and became a successful merchant. He served as treasurer of Harvard (1752-1773), Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives (1750-1759), member of the Governor's Council (1759-1773), and Commissary General of the province of Massachusetts (1759-1771). He died in July 1773 in Waltham, Massachusetts.

Condition: Fine.