First item printed for the use of the Andover Theological Seminary. Rare.
Early Andover, Massachusetts, imprint
White, Josephus, ed. Evangeliorum harmonia brevis. Andoverii, Mass.: Ex Officina, G. Ware, 1810. Small 4to. [21.4 x 12.9 cm], [8] ff. Disbound from composite volume, retaining original stab-stitch holes. Very minor toning, contemporary ownership inscription on blank margin of title page (see below).
Rare first and only edition of this early Andover, Massachusetts, imprint, apparently the first work published for the use of the Andover Theological Seminary, the first theological seminary founded in the United States (1807), which long shared a campus with the renowned preparatory school Phillips Academy (est. 1778). The pamphlet is a “harmony of the Gospels,” an indispensable reference tool of theologians since patristic times, which aligns in a tabular format the chapter-and-verse locations of events from the life of Christ as told in the different versions by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. It was printed by the 20-year-old Galen Ware (b. 1789), who published only 4 items while running the press at Andover from 1810 to 1811 (see below). The only earlier Andover imprints were two items, a sermon and a Native American narrative, published by Ames & Parker in 1798-99 (see below). Nothing was published at Andover from 1800 through 1809; following Ware’s short tenure, Flagg & Gould elevated the press to prominence beginning in 1813 (see Paradise for this history).
The Andover Evangeliorum harmonia brevis is based on tables in the appendix to Joseph White’s Diatessaron: sive integra historia Domini nostri Jesu Christi Graece... (Oxford, 1810), a copy of which a member of the theological faculty no doubt possessed, found useful, and wanted to reproduce for Andover students. That Ware printed the pamphlet expressly for the Theological Seminary seems certain given that the Seminary library recorded 164(!) copies in its 1819 catalogue (p. 156).
OCLC now locates just six U.S. examples of the Andover Evangeliorum harmonia brevis: Columbia, Emory, Harvard, Massachusetts Historical Society, Peabody Essex Museum, and American Antiquarian Society.
The example offered here carries on the title page the inscription, “Israel W. Putnam’s from Mr. Jn. W. Elli[…]” (trimmed). Israel Warburton Putnam (b. 1786) graduated from the Andover Theological Seminary in 1814. He received the item (likely) from John Wallace Ellingwood (b. 1872), class of 1812 (see, General Catalogue, pp. 26, 41).
The Andover Theological Seminary was founded in 1807 by orthodox Calvinists who were members of Congregational churches (forebears of the United Church of Christ) who fled Harvard College after it appointed a Unitarian theologian to the Hollis Professorship of Divinity in 1805, a major controversy at the time. “When Eliphalet Pearson, the first principal of Phillips Academy, for twenty years professor and sometime acting President at Harvard, returned to Andover in 1806 to propose the establishment of America’s first theological seminary, there were two great aims which he wished to accomplish. The first was to create a stronghold of Calvinism, which might counteract the spirit of Unitarianism then spreading at Harvard. The second was to make the new seminary a place not only for acquiring but for improving the literature of theology, and especially to provide for the publication of learned treatises” (Paradise, p. 2). The present pamphlet printed by Ware in consistent with those aims.
The two items printed at Andover prior to Ware were Ames & Parker’s H. H. Brackenridge, Narrative of a late expedition against the Indians: with an account of the barbarous execution of Col. Crawford (1798) and J. French, A sermon, delivered on the anniversary thanksgiving November 29, 1798 (1799). The other three items printed by Ware at Andover were: Samuel Stearns, A sermon delivered at Bedford, Mass., July 1, 1810: being the Sabbath after the death of Mr. David Bacon, who was shot through the body June 25 by Mr. William Merriam; A collection of letters relative to foreign missions: containing several of Melvill Horne’s “Letters on missions,” and interesting communications from foreign missionaries, interspersed with other extracts (late 1810; a subscription proposal for this work dated 1 August 1810 exists); and Laws of the Theological Institution (1811).
* Shaw & Shoemaker, 22037; S. H. Paradise, A History of Printing in Andover, Massachusetts 1798-1931; Catalogue of the library belonging to the Theological Institution in Andover (Andover: Flagg & Gould, 1819); General Catalogue of the Theological Seminary, Andover, Massachusetts, 1808-1908.