Applying for admission to the bar? Try to beat this letter of recommendation...

The deadline for applications to take the July bar exam just passed in May, and we had a flurry of 3Ls seeking letters of recommendation, signatures from the recommending attorneys, and so on. Naturally, this item caught my attention. It is a March 29, 1817 letter written and signed by Daniel Webster, who argued many important cases before the Supreme Court and served in the U.S. House, Senate, and as Secretary of State.  At the time of this letter, Webster had just finished his term as a representative from New Hampshire in the U.S. House; it was two years before he would argue passionately for the survival of Dartmouth College in Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 17 U.S. 518 (1819).

Webster's letter is addressed to Mr. Pickering, Secretary of the Suffolk Bar; in it, Webster vouches for the credentials and character of Martin Whiting, an 1814 graduate of Harvard University. Webster states that Whiting had been working since 1814 in the Middlesex County law office of Isaac Fiske; he explains that Whiting began in Webster's own law office as a "Student at Law" in that very month, March 1817.  In the last line, Webster certifies to "regular attestations to the correctness of [Whiting's] moral character.

According to the William T. Davis's Bench and Bar of Massachusetts, Whiting was admitted to the Suffolk Bar in May 1818 and died quite young in 1823.

All four images of the letter are available on our Facebook page!

New acquisition: Cash Book of William Coombs Thompson

This beautifully bound cash book provides a glimpse into the daily activities of William Coombs Thompson (1802-1877). Thompson, who read law in Boston and then spent his later years in Worcester, practiced for the bulk of his career as a lawyer in Plymouth, New Hampshire. That's where he was working during the almost five-year period covered by this book (March 1833-December 1837).  Reading the entries feels like time-traveling back to the 19th century.  There's the expected income from clients for drafting and serving writs and preparing deeds, but there are also expenses for bushels of oats, loaves of sugar, and apples (for his horse?).  His entries in the debit column for March 30, 1833 include an expense for powder & shot!

As you can see from the attached image, the book is arranged with credits on the left side and debits on the right. If I'm correctly understanding his system (by no means a given), Thompson used the terms in way we think of them now when looking at a bank statement--credits are money received (left) and debits are payments made (right).  This seems unusual to me, as I believe the terms are used in the opposite way in traditional accounting/bookkeeping speak. Traditional bookkeeping also typically puts debits on the left and credits on the right.  Corrections and clarifications from those more knowledgeable than me are always welcome!

New Exhibit: Recent Additions to the Collection (Spring 2014)

I’m pleased to announced that there is a new exhibit on display in the Rare Book Room, featuring exciting new additions to our collection over the past few years. Some of our most intriguing additions are documents that came directly out of legal practice in the colonies and early America, illuminating the real people practicing and affected by the law. Many would be the source of interesting research projects. Some of my favorites: a 1746 Hatfield, MA complaint against a man named Medad Negro, identified as a black manservant, for burning down a barn; a recognizance for a 14 year-old boy accused of murdering an American Indian woman; a 1819 partnership agreement between two Boston attorneys; a 1819 letter from Joseph Story asserting the need for new bankruptcy legislation; new additions to our fabulous Francis Bacon collection; and much, much more. 

The exhibit will be on display through mid-August, so please wander in as the semester wraps up or during the summer. Selected images, descriptions, and a brochure can be found on the exhibit webpage!

Cheers,

Laurel Davis

Curator of Rare Books & Manuscripts

New acquisitions: Sir Matthew Hale

We've added a couple of new volumes to our collection, both with works by Matthew Hale (1609-1676). Hale was an English jurist and writer largely known today for his insights on criminal law and, perhaps most notoriously, for expounding the proposition that it was not possible for a husband to rape his wife under the system of coverture.  This position, outlined in his work Historia Placitorum Coronæ, or The History of the Pleas of the Crown, was finally rejected in England by the House of Lords in the case of R. v. R. in 1991. Hale served under Cromwell as Justice of the Common Pleas and then under Charles II as Chief Justice of the King's Bench.  

The most interesting volume here (title page on the right, above) was printed in London in 1707 and includes three of Hale's works: his Pleas of the Crown; Or, A Methodical Summary...; A Short Treatise Touching Sheriffs Accompts (London, 1683); and A Tryal of Witches at the Assizes...(London, 1682).  Pleas of the Crown was first printed in 1678, so this is a later edition of that title, but Sheriffs and Witches are first editions.  The latter work is a record of the witchcraft trials at Bury St. Edmonds in 1662, over which Hale presided. Two elderly widows were convicted by the jury on thirteen counts of witchcraft; Hale sentenced them to death, and they were hanged. These proceedings would greatly influence the Salem witchcraft prosecutions in 1692. 

A related acquisition is a 1676 printing of Hale's Comtemplations Moral and Divine, shown on the left above.  This title, though not specifically legal, caught my eye as it appeared (twice!) in a colonial American lawyer's library inventory that I recently ran across in a legal history textbook.  The inventory also included Coke's Commentaries and Dalton's Countrey Justice, among others. 

Tired of people sitting in your pew?

Buy it!  This document reflects the sale of a pew in the Salem Meeting House in October 1769.  In September of that same year, Reverend Thomas Barnard and the proprietors of the church gave power to five committee members (Nathaniel Ropes, John Nutting, William Browne, Benjamin Pickman, and Deacon John Bickford) to make and sell four pews.  This was a common way for churches to raise money at the time.  For thirty-six pounds, Clark Gayton Pickman, a merchant and presumably a relative of committee member Benjamin Pickman, purchased pew number 60, the "Westermost Floor pew on the Front of the Men's long seats", with appurtenances.  I wonder if Mr. Pickman's heirs and assigns also got to enjoy the pew or if he sold it for a better view at some point.  The signatures and seals of all five committee members are included on the front of the document. 

This isn't the only pew deed in our collection either!  Our wonderful Brooker Collection contains at least two others: an 1812 deed for a pew in the New Meeting House of the First Parish of in Templeton, Massachusetts, and an 1837 deed for the sale of half a pew in the First Parish Meeting House in Natick, Massachusetts. 

Classroom visit to the Rare Book Room

On Monday, my colleague Mary Ann Neary brought her Bankruptcy Research students to the Rare Book Room to look at some historical materials related to bankruptcy, insolvency, and debtor-creditor relations.  Each student had an item that we described and discussed together.  Several students had important treatises, including William Cooke, A Compendious System of the Bankrupt Laws (London, 1785); Thomas Cooper, Bankruptcy Law of America and England (Philadelphia, 1801); Pocket Companion; or, Every Man his Own Lawyer by an anonymous "distinguished gentleman of the bar" (Philadelphia, 1818); and Thomas Wooler, Every Man His Own Attorney (London, 1845).  Our Cooper is always my favorite, with its worn printer's boards and untrimmed and uncut pages.  

Additionally, many students had documents from our fabulous Brooker Collection, including a writ of execution, a "please don't sue me!" letter from a debtor, an indentured servant contract, and two letters from the Boston Overseers of the Poor seeking reimbursement for funds spend on residents of other towns.  We also looked at two recent acquisitions: 1691 writ of execution out of Suffolk Superior and a 1819 letter from Supreme Court justice Joseph Story advocating for a new federal bankruptcy legislation. 

Thanks to Professor Neary for making these arrangements and to the students for being such engaged visitors!

New acquisition: colonial writ of execution

This document comes out of a contract dispute between shipwright Henry Smeath (or Smith) and Thomas Doughty, both of Saco, Massachusetts [now Maine].  Apparently, Mr. Smeath purchased an oak plank from Doughty in 1689 and refused to pay.  In October of 1690, Doughty obtained a judgment in Suffolk County against Smeath in the amount of 14 pounds, 11 shillings, and six pence, to which is here added a 2 shilling fine for the cost of executing this court order. 

Here, we have a writ of execution, signed by Joseph Webb, clerk of the Suffolk County court from 1690-1698.  Webb ordered the Marshall General or his lawful deputy to find Smeath and obtain satisfaction of the judgment; otherwise, Smeath should be seized and committed to the safekeeping of the Boston prison keeper. I'm always curious about the people behind these documents.  Did Smeath simply refuse to pay in protest of the judgment?  Did he simply not have the money?  Did he ultimately pay up, or was he arrested?  Today, there would be an attachment of his assets; at this time in England and the colonies, there were debtors' prisons for those who couldn't or wouldn't meet their financial obligations.

Many thanks to the great folks at the Philadelphia Rare Books and Manuscripts Company for the excellent description of the item, from which this post is adapted.  The detail about the oak plank is from the Genealogical Dictionary of Maine and New Hampshire.