Northampton throws itself a 250th birthday
This 1904 municipal memorial records the June 1904 festivities honoring Northampton’s settlement in 1654, with local history, portraits and celebration records.
The story
Northampton, Massachusetts, the Meadow City of the title, was settled in 1654, and in June 1904 it spent three days, the 5th to the 7th, celebrating 250 years. Afterwards the city had the whole occasion written up and published as its official memorial, the work of a committee chaired by Henry S. Gere.
Catalogued copies run to 531 pages. There are pictures of old houses and churches and portraits of prominent citizens; there are the committees, the speeches, the parades and the letters; and there are the names of the townspeople who took part. That makes it as useful to a family historian as to anyone curious about how an American town celebrated itself.
This copy is in the publisher’s brown cloth stamped with the city seal in gilt and the dates 1654–1904, with illustrated endpapers, but it is badly damaged: the cloth is torn and split at the front board and along the spine joint, and a split inner hinge has been repaired with a long strip of white tape. The edges and corners are rubbed, the cloth discoloured, and there is scattered foxing. The pages and plates have not been collated.
Details
- Date
- 1904
- Publisher
- City of Northampton, Springfield, Massachusetts
- Edition
- Original 1904 commemorative printing
- Binding
- cloth: Brown cloth with gilt civic seal and 1654–1904 lettering; illustrated brown endpapers
- Condition
- Significant structural damage: cloth torn/split at front board and spine joint with exposed underlying material, split inner hinge with long white tape/repair strip; rubbed board edges and corners, cloth discoloration, scattered foxing. Not described as sound or intact binding. Pages/plates uncollated.
