By Roberta Gebhardt,
Library Manager Montana Historical Society Research Center
I loaded my cart with a group of books and was
curious about the two leather bound volumes.
They appeared to be quite old, but I didn’t think too much about
them. When I got to my desk things got interesting.
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| Photograph by Roberta Gebhardt |
One of my responsibilities as Library Manager is
to compile a quarterly list of deaccessions.
These are books, documents and posters that are duplicates of our
collection or things that were accepted here at one point, but no longer fit
our collection or our collection management policy. The stacks hold a treasure trove of items and
you never know what you are going to find.
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| Photography by Roberta Gebhardt |
The smaller book was a law text published in 1846. There was a note attached to the front cover
that stated that the book was “formerly
the property of the law firm Lincoln and Herndon, of which the senior member
was President Abraham Lincoln.” It
goes on to say that the 3 signatures in the book are in the handwriting of
President Lincoln.
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| Photograph by Roberta Gebhardt |
I immediately took the book and showed it to the
Senior Archivist, Rich Aarstad. I wanted
another opinion and to talk about what we might do with this book. After looking at the signatures and comparing
those to several found on-line, we decided that this probably wasn’t signed by
President Lincoln. He suggested that I
contact the Lincoln Presidential Library to see if they knew anything about the
book or if they would be interested in it.
I sent an e-mail to James Cornelius, Curator of the Lincoln Collection,
at the Presidential Library. I included a scan of the note and the signatures. I received a very quick reply from Mr.
Cornelius. He stated “We would be
delighted to receive this if it is being deaccessioned. Herndon’s signature on
the Lincoln & Herndon law books is pretty recognizable to us – we have
several, including vol. 1 of the Greenleaf title.”
Even though this item is very cool it doesn’t fit
within the scope of our collection policy and it doesn’t have a tie to
Montana. We are very excited to be able
to reunite this book with its mate. It
is very humbling to think that I have been able to hold in my hands a book that
Abraham Lincoln held.
The second book was even older; it had a
publication date of 1791. It was the Journal of the Senate of the United States
of America, being the first session of the Second Congress, begun and held at
the City of Philadelphia, October 24th 1791; and in the sixteenth
year of the sovereignty of the United States. It also included a note inside the
cover. This item had been donated to the
library at the
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| Photograph by Roberta Gebhardt |
Montana State School of Mines in Butte. How it arrived at the Montana Historical
Society we may never know. The book had
been found by the donor’s family in the attic of a house in Alexandria,
Virginia.
This book will be sent to the Mansfield Library
at the University of Montana. The
Mansfield Library serves as the Regional Federal Depository Library for
Montana. This means that they have the
most complete collection of federal documents in the state. The Government Documents librarian, Susanne
Caro, stated that if they could not use this volume at the Mansfield Library
she would find it a good home. She is
connected to a large network of Federal Depository Libraries and will offer the
volume to them if it will not be kept in Missoula.
There is something very gratifying about
reuniting a set of books. This
experience reminded me of Ranganathan’s 5 laws of Library Science. Especially, the third law: Every book its reader. It’s nice to know that these items will have
homes where they will be utilized more appropriately then if we had kept them
in our collection or included them on our deaccession list. I’m ready to head back to the stacks and see
what other treasures I can find.
