Collecting Daily Life in Early American Manuscripts

“Collecting Daily Life in Early American Manuscripts” --The 2024 NEH-SHARP Living American History in Primary Documents Lecture by Ashley Cataldo
There is no doubt the early American manuscript is collectible. From autographs of the Founders to writings by major literary figures, American manuscripts fetch high prices and high spots on collectors' shelves. But the majority of manuscript production in early America was not of the traditionally collective sort. Many early manuscripts were written into blank books that were filled with records, accounts, and personal reflections by those whose names we would never know otherwise. Cataldo's talk will situ ate the collecting of early American manuscripts of daily life in the longer tradition of collecting manuscript Americana. By looking closely at several account books and other documents, this talk will help us to understand that collecting need not be about any one prized item and showcase the potential of manuscripts for helping us understand lives that appear nowhere else in the written record.
Ashley Cataldo is Curator of Manuscripts at the American Antiquarian Society. She is responsible for selecting, cataloging, and making accessible the Society's collection of diaries, correspondence, and other papers. She served as Assistant Curator of Manu scripts for four years, and prior to that, held a variety of positions at the Society, including Cataloger of Books, Reference Assistant, and Digital Expediting Assistant. She holds an M.A. in English from Clark University and has pursued graduate work toward a Ph.D. in History, also at Clark University. She has published articles on early American bookbinding and manuscript culture in “Suave Mechanicals,” the journal “Manuscripts,” and “Eighteenth-Century Life.” She has presented on book and manuscript culture at conferences held by the Society of Early Americanists, the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section, and the Bibliographical Society of America. She has served on boards or committees at BSA, the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, and a small house museum in western Massachusetts.