Description: Samuel Breck journals

Samuel Breck journals

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author:	Breck, Samuel 1771-1862 (Creator)
Collection:	Samuel Breck Journals
Collection Number:	1887
Format:	Manuscript
Language:	English
Subjects and Genres:	Kelly, Charles > Artwork Social life and customs > 19th century. United States > Politics > 19th century Watercolors > 19th century
Online Access:	Link to finding aid
Tags:	Add Tag breck 1 collection 1 marquis de lafayette 1 samuel 1

Physical Description:	3.0 Linear feet 3 linear feet, 1 box, 23 volumes
Summary:	Samuel Breck was a member of a prominent Philadelphia merchant family, a founder of the Pennsylvania Institution for the Blind, an amateur historian, and an officer of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. He kept what he called diaries, 1800-1862, which might more accurately be described as diaries-cum-commonplace books, frequently illustrated with woodcuts, engravings, and Breck's watercolors. The "diaries" comment fully on most public figures, issues, and events in both the United States and Europe. They contain a full measure of travel memoirs, personal and social gossip, as well as comments on manners and society. In 1830, Breck began to organize and condense the diaries into a volume of autobiographical "Recollections," that he carried to 1797 and in which he tells of his childhood in Boston, his education in France, and the family's move to Philadelphia in 1792. Included in the collection are special journals which Breck maintained while serving in the Pennsylvania Senate, 1819-1820, as a member of Congress, 1823-1824, and during trips to Boston, Mass., 1822, and to Quebec, 1838. There are also manuscripts of his speeches and published and unpublished articles a wide range of topics including George Whitefield to the Marquis de Lafayette, as well as four other miscellaneous volumes. Much of the "Recollections" and selections from other diaries published in Recollections of Samuel Breck. H. E. Scudder, ed. (Philadelphia: Porter and Coates), 1877.

Physical Description:

3.0 Linear feet 3 linear feet, 1 box, 23 volumes

Summary:

Samuel Breck was a member of a prominent Philadelphia merchant family, a founder of the Pennsylvania Institution for the Blind, an amateur historian, and an officer of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. He kept what he called diaries, 1800-1862, which might more accurately be described as diaries-cum-commonplace books, frequently illustrated with woodcuts, engravings, and Breck's watercolors. The "diaries" comment fully on most public figures, issues, and events in both the United States and Europe. They contain a full measure of travel memoirs, personal and social gossip, as well as comments on manners and society. In 1830, Breck began to organize and condense the diaries into a volume of autobiographical "Recollections," that he carried to 1797 and in which he tells of his childhood in Boston, his education in France, and the family's move to Philadelphia in 1792. Included in the collection are special journals which Breck maintained while serving in the Pennsylvania Senate, 1819-1820, as a member of Congress, 1823-1824, and during trips to Boston, Mass., 1822, and to Quebec, 1838. There are also manuscripts of his speeches and published and unpublished articles a wide range of topics including George Whitefield to the Marquis de Lafayette, as well as four other miscellaneous volumes. Much of the "Recollections" and selections from other diaries published in Recollections of Samuel Breck. H. E. Scudder, ed. (Philadelphia: Porter and Coates), 1877.

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