Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Another Signer's Library

This afternoon (thanks to a fortuitously-timed book arrival) I've been working on the library of Caesar Rodney (1728-1784), one of Delaware's three Signers of the Declaration of Independence (in fact the deciding vote, since Thomas McKean and George Read were split on the question). His small library (as documented in the inventory of his estate) brings to eleven the number of Signers' libraries now in LibraryThing's Libraries of Early America project.

I was very intrigued to see that five of the thirteen books listed in Rodney's inventory were military titles, but this is not particularly surprising given that Rodney commanded the Delaware militia during the Revolution. The other titles are usual suspects: law texts, a Bible, a dictionary, &c.

Only forty-five Signers left to create libraries for (though as I noted last week, Sam Adams looks like a no-go, and I've recently had word that there may not be booklists for Virginia Signers Thomas Nelson and Benjamin Harrison).