Page from Sailors' Snug Harbor Library Borrowing Register
1 media/SC-0016-III-G-1-000014_thumb.jpg 2020-05-25T07:31:52-07:00 Annie Tummino 3ab49bb2dc491ebce8f162f5757538b6789c8434 33195 2 Library register page reused for administrative correspondence. plain 2020-10-12T08:45:45-07:00 SUNY Maritime Archives, Sailors' Snug Harbor Records 1884 – 1886 The organization that has made the Item available believes that the Item is in the Public Domain under the laws of the United States, but a determination was not made as to its copyright status under the copyright laws of other countries. Sailors' Snug Harbor (Institution) Sailors' Snug Harbor Library Borrowing Register, 1884 - 1886 Heidi Rempel Digital Project Archivist NO COPYRIGHT - UNITED STATES. The organization that has made the Item available believes that the Item is in the Public Domain u Library borrowing register, years 1884-1886. Includes some administrative notes from the early 1900s that have been pasted in over the library register entries on several pages. libraries 1902 – 1908 Annie Tummino 3ab49bb2dc491ebce8f162f5757538b6789c8434This page has annotations:
- 1 2020-10-12T08:47:30-07:00 Annie Tummino 3ab49bb2dc491ebce8f162f5757538b6789c8434 Peeking from behind the taped items, the original page lists items borrowed from the Sailors' Snug Harbor library. Annie Tummino 3 plain 2020-10-14T05:53:57-07:00 Annie Tummino 3ab49bb2dc491ebce8f162f5757538b6789c8434
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Sailors as Readers: The Sailors' Snug Harbor Library
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In The View from the Masthead Hester Blum makes the case that sailors "were a class of workers who attained an above-average degree of literacy and who participated in a robust culture of reading and writing" (25). In making this case, Blum relied on the findings of Harry Skallerup, who used signature estimates, charitable organizations' surveys, naval library records, and mechanics' library histories to quantify sailor literacy (see Books Afloat & Ashore: a History of Books, Libraries, and Reading Among Seamen During the Age of Sail, 1974). Blum expanded on Skallerup's research by examining sailor writings, which provide further evidence of their literary interests and ambitions.
Six library registers are among the 375 linear feet of materials that comprise the Sailors' Snug Harbor archival collection. The registers span from 1884 through 1909, containing thousands of entries demonstrating the residents' reading habits and interests. Contemporary scholars are lucky that the registers survived; administrators had begun to re-use the ledgers, taping business documents over some of the pages.
SUNY Maritime College is home to an additional, largely unexplored, trove of data on sailors' reading habits: library records in the Sailors' Snug Harbor archives. Sailors’ Snug Harbor was the first home for retired seamen in the United States, dedicated to the welfare of “aged, decrepit, and worn out” mariners. Established through through the 1801 will of Robert Richard Randall (son of wealthy privateer Thomas Randall), the home opened on Staten Island in 1833.
According to the Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden, "by the turn of the century, Sailors’ Snug Harbor was reputedly the richest charitable institution in the United States and a self-sustaining community with farms, a dairy, a bakery, workshops, a power plant, a chapel, a sanatorium, a hospital, a concert hall, dormitories, recreation areas, gardens, and a cemetery." Omitted from this list of amenities was the library, which was used extensively by the residents.
It would be difficult to draw conclusions from the registers without a robust transcription project; however, even a casual browse reveals that these retired mariners had diverse reading tastes. This transcribed page lists periodicals, classic novels, popular fiction, and memoirs as items that were checked out between October 8th to 10th, 1884.Transcription
*Links to public domain versions of the books in parenthesis- Novels and Tales (Goethe)
- Two Years Ago (Charles Kingsley - the Epub is for a 1901 edition, but Kingsley died in 1875)
- Harper's
- Scribner's
- Court of London (The mysteries of the court of London by George W M Reynolds)
- Camp and Field (Volunteers' Camp and Field Book: Containing Useful and General Information on the Art and Science of War, for the Leisure Moments of the Soldier by John P. Curry)
- Lady of Lyndon (The Lady of Lyndon by Louise Pilkington Blake)
- Seaside Library (presumably related to the Seaside Library editions of popular titles published by George Munro)
- Our Saturday Nights (Mark Mills Pomeroy)
- Three Spaniards (Three Spaniards: A Romance By George Walker)
- Hidden Perils (Mary Cecil Hay)
- King's Own (Frederick Marryat)
- Arabian Nights
- Christina North (Eleanor A. Towle)
- Brave Old Salt (Brave Old Salt, Or, Life on the Quarter Deck, A Story of the Great Rebellion by Oliver Optic)
Notes
- The Stephen B. Luce Library's finding aid for the Sailors Snug Harbor Records is available at https://sunymaritimearchives.libraryhost.com/repositories/2/resources/11.
- The 1884 library borrowing register is digitized in full on Maritime Digital Collections at https://maritimedigitalcollections.com/Detail/objects/195.
- Header image: Sailors' Snug Harbor Postcard; Source: Digital Culture of Metropolitan New York
