Brodhead’s prefaces to the published records of New York indicated the sources of early manuscript material in the different Government offices of England, equally applicable to Massachusetts; but these records have now been gathered into the public Record Office, some account of which will be found in Mr. B. F. Stevens’s “Memorial,” Senate, Miscellaneous Documents no. 24, 47th Congress, 2d session, and in the London Quarterly, April, 1871. It requires formality and permission to examine these papers, only as they are later than 1760. The calendaring and printing of them, begun in 1855, is now going on; and Mr. Hale has described (in the Christian Examiner, May, 1861) the work as planned and superintended by Mr. Sainsbury. Three of these volumes already issued—Calendar of State Papers, Colonial America, vol. i., 1574-1660; vol. v., 1661-1668; vol. vii., 1669—are of much use to American students. Mr. F. S. Thomas, Secretary of the public Record Office, issued in 1849 a History of the State Paper Office and View of the Documents therein Deposited. Mr. C. W. Baird described these depositories in London in the Magazine of American History, ii. 321.—Ed.]
[561] [A list of the publications of this Society, brought down, however, no later than 1868, will be found in the Historical Magazine, xiv. 99; and in 1871 Dr. S. A. Green issued a bibliography of the Society, which was also printed in its Proceedings, xii. 2. The first seven volumes of its first series of Collections were early reprinted. Each series of ten volumes has its own index. The Society’s history is best gathered from its own Proceedings, the publication of which was begun in 1855; but two volumes have also been printed, covering the earlier years 1791-1854. The first of these dates marks the founding of this the oldest historical society in this country. Its founder, if one person can be so called, was Dr. Jeremy Belknap, who was one of the earliest who gave the writing of history in America a reputable character. His Life has been written by his granddaughter, Mrs. Jules Marcou, and the book is reviewed by Francis Parkman in the Christian Examiner, xliv. 78; cf. Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., i. 117; iii. 285; ix. 12; xiv. 37. His historical papers are described by C. C. Smith in the Unitarian Review, vii. 604. The two principal societies working parallel with it in part, though professedly of wider scope, are the American Antiquarian Society, at Worcester (not to be confounded with the Worcester Society of Antiquity,—a local antiquarian association), and the New England Historic, Genealogical Society, in Boston. The former has issued the Archæologia Americana and Proceedings (cf. Historical Magazine, xiv. 107); while the latter has been the main support of the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, which has published an annual volume since 1847, and these have contained various data for the history of the Society. Cf. 1855, p. 10; 1859, p. 266; 1861, preface; 1862, p. 203; 1863, preface; 1870, p. 225; 1876, p. 184, and reprinted as revised; 1879, preface, and p. 424, by E. B. Dearborn. To these associations may be added the Essex Institute, of Salem, the Connecticut Valley Historical Society (begun in 1876), the Dorchester Antiquarian Society, the Old Colony Historical Society (cf. the chapter on the Pilgrims),—all of which unite historical fellowship with publication,—and the Prince Society, an organization for publishing only, whose series of annotated volumes relating to early Massachusetts history is a valuable one.—Ed.]
[562] It is a volume of great value, and brings from $10 to $15 at sales. It is sometimes found lettered on the back as vol. iii. of the History. A third edition of the History was published in Boston in 1795, with poor type and poor paper. [A reprint of the Papers was made by the Prince Society in 1865. For other papers of Hutchinson, see 2 Mass. Hist. Coll., x., and 3 Ibid., i.; cf. N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., 1865, P. 187. A controversy for many years existed between the Historical Society and the State as to the custody of a large mass of Hutchinson’s papers. This can be followed in the Society’s Proceedings, ii. 438; x. 118, 321; xi. 335; xii. 249; xiii. 130, 217; and in Massachusetts Senate Documents, no. 187, of 1870. These papers, mostly printed, are now at the State House.—Ed.]
[563] See Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., i. 286, 397, 414; and xi. 148; also a full account of Hutchinson’s publications in Ibid., February, 1857; cf. Sabin, Dictionary, xi. 22. A correspondence between Hutchinson and Dr. Stiles, upon his history, is printed in N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., 1872, pp. 159, 230.
[564] Cf. a Memoir of Minot, in Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. viii.
[565] A fourth volume, carrying the record to 1741, was published in 1875; and since Dr. Palfrey’s death a fifth volume has been announced for publication under the editing of his son.
[566] Good copies of the original folio edition, with the map, bring high prices. One of Brinley’s copies, said to be on large paper (though the present writer has a copy by his side much larger), brought $110. The Menzies copy (no. 1,353) sold for $125. See “The Light shed upon Mather’s Magnalia by his Diary” in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., December, 1862, pp. 402-414; Moses Coit Tyler, History of American Literature, ii. 80-83. Of the map, Dr. Douglass says (i. 362): “Dr. Cotton Mather’s map of New England, New York, Jerseys, and Pennsylvania is composed from some old rough drafts of the first discoveries, with obsolete names not known at this time, and has scarce any resemblance of the country. It may be called a very erroneous, antiquated map.” [See Editor’s note following this chapter. For some notes on the Mather Library, see Memorial History of Boston, vol. i. p. xviii. The annexed portrait of Mather resembles the mezzotint, of which a reduced fac-simile is given in the Memorial History of Boston, i. 208, and which is marked Cottonus Matherus, Ætatis suæ LXV, MDCCXXVII. P. Pelham ad vivum pinxit ab origine fecit et excud. Its facial lines, however, are stronger and more characteristic. It may be the reduction made by Sarah Moorhead from the painting, thus mentioned by Pelham, for the purpose of the engraving. It is to be observed, however, that the surroundings of the portrait are different in the engraving. This same outline, but reversed, characterizes a portrait of Mather, which belongs to the American Antiquarian Society at Worcester, and which is said to be by Pelham. Paine’s Portraits, etc., in Worcester, no. 5; W. H. Whitmore’s Peter Pelham, 1867, p. 6, where the Pelham engraving is called the earliest yet found to be ascribed to that artist.—Ed.]
[567] See what Beverly says of him in the Preface to his History of Virginia, 1722. The numerous maps in his book were made by Herman Moll, a well-known cartographer of that day. Oldmixon’s name appears only to the dedication prefixed to the first edition.
[568] Carter-Brown Catalogue, iii. nos. 281, 855; and 510, for the Bishop of Winchester’s examination of Neal’s History of the Puritans.
[569] [These supplementary parts have been reprinted in 2 Mass. Hist. Coll., vii. It was republished in Boston in 1826, edited by Nathan Hale. Mr. S. G. Drake, having some sheets of this edition on hand, reissued it in 1852, with a new titlepage, and with a memoir of Prince and some plates, etc., inserted. It has been again reprinted in Edward Arber’s English Garner, 1877-80, vol. ii. Prince’s own copy, with his manuscript notes, is noted in the Brinley Catalogue, no. 350. Mr. Deane has several sheets of the original manuscript of this work.—Ed.]