In 1785, The Library Company acquired, at auction, much of the contents of the American Museum of Pierre Eugène du Simitière (1737-1784), the Geneva-born artist, naturalist, and antiquary. Du Simitière was a restless man, forever traveling, forever collecting, forever projecting grand schemes in solitude. At the American Musuem (the first public museum, btw), du Simitière presented his many materials collected during his travels and from his collections.
Toward the late 1760s, du Simitière’s collecting became more and more focused on the political history of North America. The Stamp Act of 1765 generated almost instantaneous opposition in the American colonies, and du Simitière was quick to gather the resulting effusions. He acquired this one-penny sheet of stamped paper from a Philadelphia coffee house, where it was posted after arriving from New York, a vestige of 10 boxes of such paper that had been burned.
The paper includes a note: “Part of the combustible matter which was preserv’d from amidst the devouring flames, which lately consum’d 10 boxes of the same commodity; at New York.”
Each Wednesday this month we will be highlighting the collectors and collections that have shaped the Library Company of Philadelphia since 1731, as part of the #MagnificentCollections challenge sponsored by Smithsonian Libraries.