W&M ScholarWorks Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects 1973 The Library of St George Tucker Jill Moria Coghlan College of William & Mary - Arts & Sciences Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd Part of the Library and Information Science Commons, and the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Coghlan, Jill Moria, "The Library of St George Tucker" (1973). Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. Paper 1539624830. https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21220/s2-56ky-vq24 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE LIBRARY OF ST. GEORGE TUCKER A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of History The College of William and Mary in Virginia In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts by Jill M. Coghlan 1973 APPROVAL SHEET This thesis is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Jill Coghlan Approved, March 1973. Jane Carson Henry £% Gmunder Anthony J. Esle ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...............•................... iv ABSTRACT......... v CHAPTER I. ACQUISITION OF THE LIBRARY . ............. 2 CHAPTER II. DESCRIPTION OF THE LIBRARY . ............ 27 APPENDIX A. NOTE ON BIBLIOGRAPHIC STYLE...........61 APPENDIX B. PURCHASES FROM ELIZABETH INNES ..... 63 APPENDIX C. PURCHASES FROM THE McCROSKEYS ...... 66 APPENDIX D. ESTATE LIST ................ 70 CATALOGUE OF THE LIBRARY . ......................85 BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................... 209 VITA ........... .211 iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank my advisor, Miss Jane Carson, Research Associate at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, for her continued patience and direction. Her cheerful assurance that I would complete this project has been instrumental in my success. I am also very grateful to Miss Margaret Cook, Curator of Manuscripts at the Earl Gregg Swem Library, for her valuable assistance. Mr. Henry Grunder, Curator of Rare Books of the same library, has attended to my many requests, obscure and tedious alike. He has performed services for me that are beyond the requisites of his office. The rest of my friends in Special Collections, Nancy Griesenauer, Linda Schon, and Henry Hoar, have all made the job ever so much easier. iv ABSTRACT Bermuda-born St. George Tucker trained as a lawyer in Williamsburg and later settled there. The book collection that has come down to us represents about fifty-five percent of the library items accounted for in Tucker's estate. He had collected books to entertain him in his leisure and to aid his career as a judge in the principal courts of Virginia and as the Professor of Law and Police at the College of William and Mary. Tucker kept copies of his correspondence and household accounts, including many with printers and book sellers. Not only did ho buy from these merchants, he also had them rebind much of his collection. These manuscript sources also show that Tucker acquired many books from friends and at estate sales. Law books constitute a third of the existing collection. American legal works are dominant. Tucker also owned approximately forty common law and equity volumes, which represent his interest in the historical development of the common lav; and its force in the colonies. His history collection contains most of the American items published during his lifetime; for information about world affairs, he p'referred travellers’ accounts and geography books. Periodical journals and books of poetry reflect other interests. Tucker annotated approximately a third of the extant collection. He cross-referenced within the legal entries and carefully edited histories of the revolution. Outside the law collection, his books on astronomy were the most heavily annotated. A brief comparison of Tucker's library with the collection Thomas Jefferson sold to the Library of Congress in 1815 reveals that Jefferson pursued a greater variety of subjects and purchased many more volumes. Jefferson's principal fields of interest were politics, science and education. Tucker emphasized legal studies, American history, poetry, and astronomy. v THE LIBRARY OF ST. GEORGE TUCKER CHAPTER I ACQUISITION OF THE LIBRARY An abundance of supporting materials is rare in bibliographic studies of the eighteenth century. Clues have to be scraped from flyleaves and winnowed from chance comments. In the case of St. George Tucker, the contrary is true. More than half of the books originally in his library, as well as a very large manuscript collection, have come down to us. Since 1788, when Tucker moved to Williamsburg, his descendants have owned and lived in the house that sits just off the Palace Green. St. George was succeeded by his son, Nathaniel Beverley, whose daughter, Cynthia first married Henry A. Washington, and after his death, married Charles Washington Coleman. Their son George Preston Coleman married Mary Haldane. In 1966, Mrs. George Preston Coleman presented the Tucker-Coleman book and manuscript collection to The College of William and Mary. She had discovered the value of the collection in the 1930's and had used the Tucker papers as the basis for her book, Sjt. George Tucker, Citizen of No Mean City. ^ The Tucker-Coleman collection of books contains 1,564 volumes,("488 of which can positively be identified as Tucker's. The inside of the front cover of each of these carries his signature, often with the addition of the cost, the year purchased, or the person from whom it was acquired. ^•Mary Haldane Coleinan, S_t. George Tucker, Citizen of No Mean City (Richmond, 1938). - 2 - Occasionally, he signed the title page as well. Approximately one third of the Tucker items contain his annotations. There are a few titles that do not bear his signature, but the accounts of his purchases and the notes within the volumes attest his ownership. We are equally fortunate in the mass of Tucker's personal correspondence and financial accounts. Albeit he made the initial collection, and even made copies of letters written to others, we have to thank his descendants for retaining the collection which amounts to approximately 30,000 items. This Tucker- Coleman manuscript collection contains letters to friends and family, to publishers and authors, accounts with booksellers, receipts, and book lists. A study of these manuscripts reveals that St. George Tucker pursued a broad spectrum of interests including law and history, poetry and the classics, natural philosophy and technology. Like others of his generation, he secured a classical education before he began his legal training, and thereafter continued to read, correspond, and editoralize on a number of subjects. St. George Tucker was born July 10, 1752 at the Tucker plantation called the Grove, near Port Royal, Bermuda. His father, Colonel Henry Tucker, was a well-educated gentleman who appreciated the high style of life in London, where he had been agent for Bermuda at two separate times. After the outbreak of the American Revolution, his fortunes in commerce declined sharply. He and his wife, Ann Butterfield Tucker, had six children: Henry, Thomas Tudor, Nathaniel, Frances, Elizabeth, and St. George. Henry, the second of that name and the only son to remain in Bermuda, took up maritime law. Thomas Tudor studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, and after graduating, began his practice in Charleston, South Carolina in 1770. Nathaniel, also sent to Edinburgh to train for the medical profession, was in the middle of his studies when hostilities between the American colonies and the mother country prevented his return to Bermuda, and he remained in England and practiced medicine. Frances married a Bermuda cousin, the third Henry Tucker; while Elizabeth remained unmarried and became a strong figure in the life of the family. 2 As the youngest in this large family, St. George received his first lessons from older brothers and sisters. At the age of fourteen he left home to attend the Rev. Alexander Richardson's grammar school in the town of St. George's, and then to live in the home of a lawyer uncle, John Slater. Tucker's life-long interest in the classics and the law was established in his uncle's library. When Slater died late in'1771» he left his nephew a third of his solid lawyer's library.'* St. George had already decided that he wanted to practice law in Bermuda and hoped to attend the Inns of Court in London. But the education of the older boys had been so expensive that, on the advice of Thomas Tudor, his parents decided to send St. George to the College of William and Mary in Virginia. In October 1771 he left Bermuda with his brother-in-law Henry Tucker to visit friends in New York and Philadel­ phia. He arrived in Norfolk to spend Christmas with an aunt, her husband Archibald Campbell, and their son Donald. He finally arrived in Williamsburg in January of 1772. Of the two courses open to him at the College of William and Mary -- Natural Philosophy and Moral Philosophy -- he chose the former under the Rev. Thomas Thomas Gwatkin. Tucker would pursue a course of general 2lbid., pp. 1-8. ^Charles T. Cullen, St. George Tucker and Law in Virginia, 1772- 1804. (Dissertation, University of Virginia, 1971), pp. 5-16. Coleman, Tucker. p. 11 education before starting legal training which could be obtained only in a lawyer's office. In the summer of 1772 he was ready to become a student of George Wythe.^ No doubt he had been attending some of the spring sessions of the General Court and the General Assembly, and talking with lawyers and representatives who came for these meetings.