Although the internet is considered a mixed blessing by rare book dealers, it can be very usefull whenever we set out on a small voyage of discovery when we catalogue our books. Consider these signatures we found in our copy of the Memoir of Henry Obookiah, a Native of the Sandwich Islands, who died at Cornwall, Connecticut, February 17, 1818, aged 26. (New York, ca. 1830). Our vast research library was of no use here, but Google directly pointed us to several genealogy websites, that proved an excellent starting point for our quest to find out more about the people who once owned this book. This led us to the following information: Ellsworth Tuthill (1828-1911) was a coastal shipping captain from Wading River, Riverhead, Suffolk County, New York, who later became a farmer and a butcher, before building up a large fishing factory. More interesting, we think, was the information we found on his sister, who may have been the one who gave him this book, as her name appears with a date (February 6th, 1845) and a location (Greenport). Sarah Strong Tuthill (1830-1882) was an art teacher and a painter, whose works in pre-Raphaelite style features in numerous national exhibitions. Before that, however, she was a classmate of Emily Dickinson at Mount Holyoke. And according to this very interesting blog post (consecratedeminence.wordpress/2012/08/24/she-is-ever-fair-and-never-proud) Sarah Tuttle scribbled notes about her classmates, including Dickinson, in her copy of the Eleventh Annual Catalogue of the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. She is ever fair, and never proud, Hath-tongue at will and yet is never loud, is what she wrote about the famous poet. Of course, this is just a small detail, but solving little mysteries such as these is one of the reasons why working with antiquarian books is so stimulating. The Tuthills copy of the Memoir of Henry Obookiah will be included in our upcoming thematic list on Australia & the Pacific. As the full title implies, Henry Obookiah (whose portrait is seen here on the right) was a native of Hawaii. He studied at the Andover Theological Seminary in Massachussetes, in order to become a missionary on his native island, but before he could return he succumbed to typhoid fever in 1818.
Posted on: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 14:00:00 +0000
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