Descrizione:
To have read, or even to have examined cursorily, this great mass of material would have been impossible; notwithstanding the encourage ment offered by the conspicuous example of G. M. Asher, Who tells us that, in the preparation of his Buay on t/ze Dutcfi Booté: and Pamplzlet: relating to new-net/zerland, in one single summer he bestowed at least a searching glance on seven thousand pamphlets in the Royal Library at The Hague, seven thousand in the Thysiana Library at Leyden, and eight thousand at Amsterdam, besides consulting many manuscript and printed authorities, and examining critically many hundred maps. Nat urally, the greater part Of these titles in the Public Library could be put aside at once as relating to subdivisions Of the subject foreign to our par ticular field of investigation, or as being of too specialised a character to be immediately useful. In addition to a careful examination of such well-known sources as R6007'df of New ?mrterdam, Documentary Hirtory of New York, New York Colonial Documents, Eccleriartical Records, C alendarr of H iotorical M anu Jcript: (datca and Englixlz), journal: of t/ze Arremoly, Laws of New 1 oré, and Minute: of t/ze Common Council, and Of such authorities as Brodhead, o'callaghan, Mrs. Lamb, Mrs. Van Rensselaer, and-riker, every promis ing title was investigated, and several hundred works, both printed and manuscript, were read or carefully scrutinised. The most important of these, as well as a number of newly discovered sources, Will be_ found described in the Bibliography and in the Cartography. These researches, beginning in the New York Public Library, were eventually extended to cover the principal libraries and collections of America, and included the New York Historical Society, the various city departments, the State Library at Albany, the office of the Secretary of State, the Library of Congress, the American Antiquarian Society, the Boston Public Library, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Massachusetts Archives, the Connecticut Historical Society, the Rhode Island Historical Society, the John Carter Brown Library, the New Jersey Historical Society, the New berry Library, of Chicago, the Library Company of Philadelphia, and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. |
