Bibliography Of The Historical Publications Issued By The New England States
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A Catalogue of the Washington Collection in the Boston Athenæum
(This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)
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Appleton Prentiss Clark Griffin was an American librarian, bibliographer.
Background
Appleton Prentiss Clark Griffin, the son of Moses Porter and Charlotte Helen (Clark) Griffin, was born on July 24, 1852 at Wilton, New Hampshire, whence the family moved to Medford, Massachusetts, in 1854. His ancestry included Hugh Griffin, the first town clerk of Sudbury, Massachusetts, and, in his mother’s line, Samuel Appleton; Roger Conant, first governor of the Cape Ann Colony, 1625-26; Henry Prentiss, “planter” of Cambridge, 1640; and John Rogers, fifth president of Harvard College.
Education
Griffin studied at the Medford public school.
Career
Griffin began work as a “runner” in the Boston Public Library, December 1, 1865. Thenceforth libraries, with occasional help from private tutors, schooled this descendant of Harvard graduates.
His entire career of sixty years was spent in the service of four libraries of the scholarly type, to the first of which he gave twenty-eight years and ten months and to the fourth, twenty-eight years and eight months of service. From “runner, ” he advanced by gradual steps to “custodian of the shelves, ” “custodian of the building, ” and, finally, “keeper of the books, ” directing the selection, ordering, and classifying of 25, 000 volumes of the best literature added annually to one of the most systematic general collections of books in America. He thus acquired a knowledge of literature not to be duplicated in a like period except by one of like powers of absorption and persistence.
In September 1894 his long connection with the Boston Public Library ceased, and he spent the next three years in research and compilation in the Boston Athenaeum and in the Lenox Library in New York. For the Athenaeum he prepared its elaborate Catalogue of the Washington Collection (1897).
He contributed to Appletons’ Cyclopedia of American Biography the sketches of Philip Freneau, Robert Fulton, Thomas Gage, and Nathanael Greene. The first edition of his Bibliography of American Historical Societies was published by the American Historical Association in 1896, the second edition, greatly enlarged, in 1907.
On August 27, 1897, he was appointed an assistant on the staff then being organized for the Library of Congress, and when in 1900 the division of bibliography was created, he became chief bibliographer. In this position, which he held for eight years, he published over fifty bibliographic lists (more than 3, 350 pages), regarded as useful contributions to knowledge.
Upon the death in 1908 of Ainsworth Rand Spofford, he became chief assistant librarian of Congress, which position he held until his death. He was now chief reference officer of the library and the librarian’s chief adviser on the selection of books. He was greatly competent in both capacities because of his constant studies in general literature, his accumulated knowledge, his industry, his unusual flair for source material submerged beyond the reach of indexes, catalogues, and lists, and his sound judgment as to what material is of real worth in a research library.
Griffin died in 1926, after an illness of five days, and was buried in Mount Auburn, Cambridge, beside his wife and daughter.
Achievements
In the course of fifteen years Griffin stood among the best bibliographers of the country. His elaborate list on the Renaissance, was praised by John Addington Symonds; his “European Origin of the Aryans”, by Salomon Reinach. The library published many of his lists.
His Bibliography of the Historical Publications of the New England States (1895) was contributed to the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, to which he belonged for thirty years.
