LIBRARY NOTES
Henry S. F. Cooper
The Spencer Byard Fund
Wednesday, June 1, 1994
At the Annual Meeting on May 11, 1994 a restored and newly framed map from our archives was dedicated to Spencer Byard, chairman of the Library from 1979-1985, secretary for the previous quarter century, and at the time of his death in 1992, a member of the Board for forty years. To date, donations to a memorial fund from his friends total $2500. His wife, Margaret Mather Byard (chairman of the Committee of Visitors and, as of the Annual Meeting, a new trustee), and his children, Paul Byard and Margaret Stearns, decided to use part of the fund to restore and frame the 1846 lithograph that was badly in need of conservation.
Entitled "Origin of Steam Navigation," by John Hutchings, the purpose of this lithography was to fortify the claim of one John Fitch to having launched his own steamboat invention on the Collect Pond in 1797 or 1798 - before Robert Fulton's 1807 claim. In the controversy, Fitch alleged that Fulton and his partner Robert Livingston (a Library trustee who made a great deal of money on the steamboat patent) owed their success to Fitch, who clearly wanted a piece of the action.
The Byard family hopes to renovate additional archival material with their Spencer Byard Fund. They have their eye on a series of architectural drawings for a building the library occupied in the early 19th century.
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