Above the pages’ desk in the staff workroom of the Library is a collection of miscellanea collected from books over the years. Everyone who reads has their own way of marking their page: with an official weighted bookmark, a favorite postcard, or even dried flowers. These bits and pieces of others’ lives fall out of books and into the present. Behind the scenes at the Library we discover these little treasures.

While researching the Visscher map, currently housed in the Reference Room, we pulled a book from the closed stacks that looked like it had seen better days. It’s unlikely anyone’s looked at it in 50 years, much less checked it out. We cracked the book open and, to our surprise, out fell a partial envelope with a near-perfect wax seal.  In handwriting belonging to an era long past was the following:

J. Romeyn Brodhead

8 West 21^st Street

City of New York

 Our initial quest momentarily forgotten, we looked inside the envelope. To our disappointment, it was absolutely empty. Not to be discouraged, we thumbed through the book, hoping the contents of the envelope had been used to mark another page. We found no other paper markers, but we did spot John R. Brodhead—the same name as on the envelope—written along the top margins of several pages in the book. From here we set out to discover John Romeyn Brodhead’s history and his connection to The New York Society Library.

He served as a trustee for the Library from 1858 to 1871. His wife generously donated his personal collection of over 1,000 texts to the Library after his death in 1873. The bulk of his collection reflects his passion for history, with many books relating to the history of New York, including A Bibliographical and Historical Essay on the Dutch Books and Pamphlets which held our surprise envelope. 

Before serving as a Library trustee, Brodhead was a scholar, a historian of the American colonial age. He was accepted to the New York Bar in 1835 but lucked into a job as an attaché of a foreign legation in the Netherlands. It was there where his passion for New York history was fed. With the support of the New-York Historical Society, he became an envoy for the State Legislature to The Hague, charged with procuring and transcribing archival documents related to the colonization of New York. His work would eventually be published by the government in a humbling 15-volume set entitled Documents Relating to the Colonial History of New York. He continued to work and published several titles including History of the State of New York, considered to be one of the best works about colonial New York.

Most importantly for our purposes, Brodhead used scraps of envelopes as bookmarks. Even from the most innocuous of things we can uncover more of the Library’s history.