(CONNECTICUT) Autograph and portrait album kept by a member

Sale 2505 - Lot 74

Price Realized: $ 281

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Estimate: $ 400 - $ 600

(CONNECTICUT.) Autograph and portrait album kept by a member of Yale's Class of 1848. 18 engravings of Yale faculty and views tipped in. [107] manuscript pages. 4to, original 1/2 calf, boards detached, lacking backstrip; minimal wear to contents. New Haven, CT, 1848

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This album was compiled by Henry Blodget (1825-1903), Yale Class of 1848, who later also received his Doctor of Divinity from Yale and would spend 40 years as a missionary to China. He carefully planned this album. The early pages were reserved for officers and faculty, often with engravings and inscriptions juxtaposed. President Theodore Woolsey offered an inscription in Greek. Other signers included chemist Benjamin Silliman, physicist Josiah W. Gibbs, and the school's first professional librarian, Edward C. Herrick. Leaves were then set aside for each of Blodget's 87 classmates, securing signed inscriptions from most of them, some of them quite substantial and many appended with hometown and date of birth. Among them were Austin Arnold, who soon died returning from the California Gold Rush; and Theodore Winthrop, who would become the first Union officer to give his life in the Civil War. The Class of 1848 is followed by 18 other inscriptions, many by other Yale graduates from the classes of 1847 through 1851. Pinned to the last two leaves are alumni notices from 1888 and 1889.