Seminary Libraries
Various seminaries built their collections by buying the libraries of retired or deceased European—largely German—professors. In 1856, Harvard Divinity School acquired 4000 volumes from the library of Professor Friedrich Lücke of Göttingen.228 By the early 1880s (so Hitchcock told his students), Thilo’s library had gone to New Haven, that is, to Yale; Niedner’s, to Andover Seminary; and Hengstenberg’s, to the Baptist seminary in Chicago. Neander’s library, secured by the Baptist Theological Seminary in Rochester,229 was disappointingly small, but Hitchcock explained that Neander did not need to own many books himself because he had access to the excellent libraries in Berlin.230 The collection that grounded Union’s library will be discussed below.
The professors were also delegated to buy books for their institution’s library on trips abroad. Letters and notes in their travel diaries detail how much they spent—often more than they had been allotted—and sometimes, what they had been able to buy. In 1826, for example, the young Charles Hodge in Europe was delegated by Seminary officials at Princeton to deal with European booksellers.231 In 1866, on a European trip, Smith purchased $600 worth of books for the Union library.232 Philip Schaff on his many trips abroad bought books in London, Rome, and Germany for the libraries at Mercersburg and later at Union.233 In June 1890, the president of Union wrote to Schaff in Europe to restrain his book-buying: “I hope you will not be tempted to run us into debt.”234
In 1832, of seminary libraries in America, Andover had the largest collection (10,000 volumes), followed by Princeton (6000 volumes).235 In 1844, The Society of Clergymen noted that all seminary libraries in the United States held collectively about 130,000 volumes; how much better (they argued) it would be if there were fewer seminaries with more books for each. They contrasted the paltry state of American libraries with those in Berlin (over 500,000 volumes), Göttingen (nearly 300,000), Munich and Paris (nearly 800,000 each). As noted earlier, the combined collections of the nine most important theological libraries in America, the clergymen reported, contain fewer than one-quarter of the volumes available at Munich or Paris.236
Henry Smith, who served as the librarian at Union Seminary for much of his career, was keenly interested in the size of collections. As the editor of the “Theological Intelligence” column of the American Theological Review,237 he garnered information on libraries from various journals to report in his column. In the mid-nineteenth century, university libraries and public libraries vied with each other in terms of their holdings. For example, in 1860 Smith noted that the Astor Library in New York—the largest public library in the country, which provided the foundation for the New York Public Library—housed 80,000 books, topping Harvard University’s 74,000 volumes.238 At Columbia in 1876, by contrast, the library contained only about 25,000 volumes, and was open for one and a half hours a day for books to be checked out.239 Smith’s statistics also suggest that the 1860s, despite the nation’s massive problems during and after the Civil War, were years of library expansion.
THE SEMINARY LIBRARY AT PRINCETON
Although the founders of the Theological Seminary at Princeton in 1812 hoped to establish a large theological library, they faced the same difficulties that other seminaries soon would. The first professor at the Seminary, Archibald Alexander, served as librarian and kept the Seminary’s books in his house. By 1817, however, the collection had received its own new building and acquired a deputy librarian.240 As Samuel Miller complained to his students, we lack books, and public libraries are few.241 Miller expressed regrets to his students that many books he would recommend were not obtainable, so we must “grope our way as well as we can.” Americans (he told students at some unspecified date) are hindered from securing many useful books from abroad, due to “the state of our foreign relations”—perhaps the aftermath of the War of 1812?242
A report by an unidentified author in 1822 regarding the Seminary at Princeton remarks that the present library was “very small and imperfect.” It then contained “comparatively few of the books which are most indispensable to Theological Students,” and even the ones it did own were in single copies, thus not adequate for student needs.243 A fireproof building was a chief desideratum: the writer reminded his audience that the greater part of the Princeton College library had been destroyed by fire in 1802.244 By 1823, eleven years after the Seminary’s founding, the library had amassed about 4000 volumes.245 This number grew in the years to come: by 1830, to over 6000 volumes;246 by 1850, to 9000; by 1879, to over 31,000 books and 8500 pamphlets; and by 1900, to 64,544 books and nearly 27,000 pamphlets.247
In the early days of American seminaries, it was not imagined that libraries were places where students would work; rather, libraries were repositories from which students might retrieve books for use in their own rooms. This situation is reflected in the hours during which seminary libraries were available to professors and students. As late as the 1850s, the library at Princeton Seminary opened its doors just twice a week for the borrowing of books; after 1868, it was open two hours every weekday.248 In the 1870s, Cornell University’s decision to keep its library open from 8 a.m. till 6 p.m. was considered a major innovation.249 Given these conditions, it is not surprising that writers commenting on German seminars often marvel that students have their own work-spaces in rooms where books and journals are readily available for their use.
THE LIBRARIES AT HARVARD
In 1816, George Ticknor, one of the first American scholars to study in Germany, complained to the steward of Harvard College’s meager library that the 20,000 volumes at Harvard paled before the 200,000 at Göttingen. Libraries are what make a university, he indignantly asserted.250 In the decades to come, Harvard’s libraries would become the envy of many theological institutions.
In the mid-1820s, as work was started on Divinity Hall at Harvard, the Trustees of the Theological Education Society and the Corporation of the College appropriated $2000 to acquire books for the Theological Institution: this marked the beginning of the Harvard Divinity School library.251 By mid-century, the theological library at Harvard had grown, despite the dwindling student population. By 1870, it had 16,000 volumes,252 and was declared by Edward Everett Hale to be “the best and largest theological library in the country.”253 (Apparently Hale did not know that by then, Union Seminary’s library topped Harvard Divinity School’s.) Yet the library was cramped, not fireproofed, and open only two hours a day for dispensing books. Although a permanent librarian was hired, when he died in 1876, the faculty was forced to resume the librarian’s duties.254 For seminar work in history to be developed, libraries had to be reconceived as “laboratories” (as Ephraim Emerton put it), not merely as storehouses for books—and hence be open for students to consult many books at a time.255 In the early twentieth century, the Andover Seminary library, which had been the envy of other developing seminaries a century previous, was merged with the library of the Harvard Divinity School.256
THE LIBRARY AT UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
When in 1837 Edward Robinson accepted the appointment in biblical studies at the newly founded Union Seminary, he argued that the fledgling Seminary’s library should have “a complete series of the work of the Fathers, so called, in the best editions, and with the proper apparatus,” as well as the best editions of Greek and Roman writers.257 Some years passed before this desideratum was filled.
The development of the Union Seminary library benefited from the secularization of the religious houses in Germany, most notably, the Benedictine Monastery of St. Mary at Paderborn. In response to political turmoil and anticipating the dissolution of their monastery during the Napoleonic Wars, the monks divided the library collection among themselves. About 13,000 volumes258 were placed in the safekeeping of a monk whose family name was Leander Van Ess. Van Ess took the volumes with him when he became a professor at the University of Marburg in 1812, and