Eminent Americans — 1881 — Benson J. Lossing

Updated on May 22: This book has been sold.

Full title: Eminent Americans comprising Brief Biographies of Leading Statesmen, Patriots, Orators and Others, Men and Women, Who Have Made History by Benson J. Lossing. Published in New York by American Book Exchange in 1881. 488 pp.

This collection features hundreds of brief biographies, including Samuel Adams, John Adams, Daniel Boone, Andrew Jackson, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and many more. Includes more than one hundred portraits by Lossing and Barritt.

There are a few Princeton, NJ Library stamps and a few pages, especially early on, have some underlining. My guess is that the reader got tired of that and stopped after the first biography. (He or someone did add the note, "A noble life," to the portrait of Catherine Ferguson much later in the book.)

And while it's not old enough (for any of us) to consider it "historic," the note at the front is kind of charming: " . . . got December 12, 1972 from George Fink."  And on the opposite page, "Read March 1978."

— Lee Wright | Founder

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