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Originally published in the Library Blog, December 24, 2013 by Erin Schreiner
Part 1
The John Sharp Collection of theological books has been a part of the New York Society Library since its founding in 1754. Consisting of books printed from the 15th through the 18th century, the Sharp Collection was built to be the foundation of the first public library in New York in 1713. It is perhaps the only library of colonial New York to survive the Revolutionary War largely intact. The collection today consists of 280 volumes, many surviving in original bindings with personal markings by Sharp and other owners, from ownership inscriptions to bookplates.
The Special Collections Department at the New York Society Library is pleased to announce that the collection is now fully cataloged online for the first time. This blog post is the first of a two part introduction to the collection, providing an overview of Sharp’s life and work in the American colonies between 1701 and 1713. The next post will discuss how Sharp built the collection, and its history in the Library since its deposit with us in 1754.
Much of what we know about Sharp comes from the autobiography he wrote on the first two pages of the journal he kept between 1704 and 1713. The journal survives today in the collections of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and the Society Library recently acquired a digital copy of it for use by researchers here in our library. In addition to this brief biographical sketch, the journal also records his daily activities, and contains lists of the people he baptized and married in America. The contents of the entire journal were transcribed and published in the Pennsylvania Magazine of History in 1899 and again in, in two parts, 1916 (part 1 and part 2).
A Scotsman, John Sharp was born to Rev. Alexander Sharp (d.1709) and his wife Anne Douglass, on May 15, 1680. By age twenty, Sharp had earned an MA at the University in Aberdeen, and was ordained as a minister in London in 1701. On July 3, 1701 he boarded a ship bound for Virginia, arriving there on September 8. He immediately traveled on to Maryland, where he worked with Reverend Thomas Bray and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (hereafter, S.P.G.). From 1702-1703 he was the rector of Broad Neck Parish, Arundel County, Maryland (now St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church, Annapolis), and then worked for a year at Snow Hill Parish (now All Hallows Episcopal Church, Snow Hill), Worcester County, Maryland. In late 1703 or early 1704, Bray and Sharp quarreled (apparently over money) and parted ways. (Sharp did not record the dispute in his diary, but Austin Baxter Keep’s History of the New York Society Library quotes a description of the quarrel in a letter from Rev. Henry Nichols in Pennsylvania to S.P.G . Treasurer, Rev. Philip Stubbs in London, advocating for Sharp to receive payment for his work.) Sharp abruptly relocated to New York, and after doing evangelical work in New Jersey with Rev. John Talbot, he was appointed Chaplain of her Majesty's Forces in the Province of New York by then Governor of New York, Edward Hyde, Lord of Cornbury. He lived in the City for about ten years, preaching with William Vesey at Trinity Church and travelling frequently to preach to troops in upstate New York. In 1710, he married Margarita Dreyer, and returned to England three years later to visit his elderly mother and devote himself to raising money for the public library he hoped to found in New York City.
In addition to his diary, Sharp left a number of traces behind that shed light on his library and evangelical work in greater detail. This includes three manuscript copies of Sharp’s “Proposal for erecting a school, library, and chapel at New York,” one of which is held in the Manuscripts Division of the New York Public Library. The two more copies survive in England in the Lambeth Palace and Bodleian Libraries. Sharp wrote out at least five copies, four of which he distributed in England. The manuscript at New York Public Library contains a list of individuals who received copies, indicating that perhaps that one was his own. According the list, he gave left one copy in New York with Elias Neau, to be given to New York Governor Robert Hunter. He distributed three copies in England to John Robinson, the S.P.G., and Francis Atterbury This copy records some provenance information, with several late 18th century inscriptions by James Grant, possibly the colonial governor or English vicar. A thorough study of Sharp would require consultation of all three surviving manuscripts, which appear to vary from copy to copy. However, the copy in the Lambeth Palace Library was transcribed and printed by the New-York Historical Society in their annual publication, Collections of the New York Historical Society for the Year 1880, so it is possible to compare two copies from right here in New York.
This manuscript traces the roots of the collection to Sharp’s vision for a public library. The NYPL and Lambeth Palace copies both contain catalogs of books Sharp had already acquired for his library, the former and more substantial catalog is dated 1715 and the latter dated 1713 (more on these catalogs in the next post). The manuscript also provide some insight into Sharp as a person. Sharp wrote about his ideas for his project, motivation for taking it on, and included views on colonial life in New York. Part of the manuscript is devoted to the establishment of a library, which would be attached to a school and small church that would be made available primarily to clergymen wishing to preach to and convert African slaves and Native Americans, as well as local free children. At the beginning of his pamphlet he explicitly states that the commercial heart of the City permeates all aspects of life, saying “the Genius of the people so inclined to merchandise, that they generally seek no other Education for their children than writing and Arithmetick.” In his discussion of the school and Elias Neau, the man he hopes will someday run it, one catches a glimpse of an intensely compassionate and open-minded man, who saw all men as equals in the eyes of God regardless of race. Sharp’s concern for enslaved Africans and Native Americans also reflects an important aspect of early New York’s history: in the early 18th century, twenty-percent of New York residents were enslaved. In his manuscript, Sharp reflects on the slave revolt he witnessed in the City on April 6, 1712, and bemoans the fact that the school where slaves were receiving instruction from Elias Neau was cited as the place where rioters met and planned the attack.
According to the manuscript, Sharp intended to dedicate himself to raising funds for his New York school and library while England, and seems to have made some effort to do so. After 1716, however, Sharp’s life story recedes into darkness; no traces of him survive other than his dated signatures in the books here at the Library.
My next post will explore perhaps the most substantive material testament to Sharp’s life: the library he left behind in New York and continued to build from England. Sharp signed and dated the title pages of many of his books, so it is possible to reconstruct the library from the first to last books acquired, and also to understand their history as it became intertwined with the Library’s. Stay tuned!
Part 2
In 1713 and 1715 Sharp completed manuscript lists of the books in his library, three copies of which survive today (see my last post for more on these). With these catalogs it is possible to reconstruct the history of the collection to ascertain when (and in some cases, how) he acquired the books, and what portion of the original collection survives today.
Sharp built his collection in two phases, in America from 1701 to 1713 and then in England from 1713 to 1716. The catalog of the collection which he made in 1713 documents the books he left behind in New York to found the library he hoped to build. The catalog lists 133 titles, of which 33 survive in the collection today. Of these, three titles contain the signature of Sharp’s father, Alexander Sharp, indicating that Sharp either brought these with him in 1701, or that they were shipped to him in New York, perhaps after Alexander’s death in 1709.
Between 1703 and 1713, Sharp acquired 33 books, some of which record not only the date of acquisition but also the point or price of purchase. In 1703, for example, Sharp purchased Newman’s Concordance of the Scriptures, and recorded the price he paid (15 shillings) and year of purchase on the title page with his signature. Sharp’s copy of Edward Leigh’s Critica Sacra records that he purchased the book in New York in 1705, from the “Widow of the Blyns.”
In 1715, Sharp donated his personal collection of 238 books to the city as a founding collection for a public library. In 1715 he made another catalog of the books (held now at NYPL) The books were held in trust for the next fifteen years by Governor William Burnet, and it was at his home that Benjamin Franklin wrote of having seen a "very large library," which probably included Sharp’s books. In 1730, the Sharp Collection was finally put to its intended use as part of the New York Corporation Library. The Corporation Library served a small group of readers until it closed in 1747, and its collection became the foundation of the New York Society Library when it opened seven years later. In 1766, there seems to have been some effort to reconstitute and revitalize the Corporation Library, as a catalog for it was produced.
Sharp’s books, however, may have never been seen in the Society Library until the early 19th century. A note in the September 11, 1754 records that the Library Trustees (Mr. Murrary, Mr. Chambers, Mr. Barclay, Mr. Watts, Mr. B. Nichols, Mr. William Livingston, and Mr. William P. Smith) ordered the following:
That such books of the Corporation Library as we may judge will be of no service, & scarce ever read, may be put up into Boxes to be made for that purpose and secured, that so more room may be obtained for the convenient placing the books expected for the Library under our management, in case the same shall be found wanted.
Then, in November of 1804, the following advertisement appeared in the Morning Chronicle (5 November 1804, issue 499, p. 2):
CITY LIBRARY. – About a year ago the public prints noticed the discovery of a library of ancient authors in an unfrequented apartment in Trinity Church. We understand that a considerable part of that collection has been recently placed in the city library. These will afford a feast to the antiquarians in literature, as there are among them many curious works, and the theological productions of several of the fathers.
The books don’t appear in any of the Library’s catalogs until 1813, Sharp’s books were listed in the very first section of the catalog, describing the Library’s Theological collection.
