Darwin Comes to the Old Northwest

Abstract

Darwin Comes to the Old Northwest Stuart Stiffler (bio) A decade following American publication of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species in 1860, a small, early core of volumes relevant to threaded themes of posited biophysical evolution and a vibrant new empirical science were starting to be available to settlers in the American Old Northwest. These titles, in company with intelligence disseminated in local newspapers and in public address, present an early view of what was to become an evolving climate of regional opinion. A dramatic arousal of public interest emerged finally into the semblance of a major American cultural debate.1 The emergence of numerous small stock and subscription libraries in the Old Northwest, intended to service the general reading of curious settlers, has been documented. An earnest solemnity, rooted in an ambiance of mission and ambition, became attached to the organization of these local reading and study societies and survives in some of their names: First Moral Library Association, [End Page 82] Mutual Improvement and Library Society, Progress Library Club, Young Men's Reading and Literary Society, Citizen's Society, Ladies Literacy Society, Philosophical Literary Society, Advance Society, Franklin Library Association, and Reading Club.2 A profile of axial works in the inventories of these infant reading stations, based upon surviving print catalogs, has thus far not extended much beyond reference to individual library collections. Some segments of western immigrants, typically with limited leisure and without the particular perspectives of college, seminary, natural history associations, or other elite cohorts, were also drawn to available reading. Incipient regional library stocks, aligned with settlers' aspirations, may offer a view of the spirit and timing of an early popular encounter with the new sciences. Early on, an undeveloped marketing structure for the channeling of print into the Old Northwest could delay the mediation of new ideas. As the regional population grew and economies developed, the Old Northwest social libraries' connection with the eastern book trade gradually matured. The supply of collections benefited from the early opening of the Erie Canal, in 1826, and especially before the completion of marketing centers later enabled by North–South rail networking in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. Inquiry in the natural sciences, however, was destined to generate animated controversy in science/religion and conduct-of-life literatures. In postbellum America, this energetic strife was to "crash and rumble in expanding circles, disrupting old habits and beliefs and spread in thrusts of elite penetration" that increasingly engaged wider attention.3 A survey of five antebellum social library collections in Ohio's Connecticut Western Reserve registers an average 13.2 percent of religion reading in subcollections, measured ultimately against a decreasing average 5.8 percent in four postbellum collections. (Table 1) The 65 percent religion/conduct-of-life share of the 20 most duplicated works of a surveyed nineteenth century Western Reserve library appear to have generally conformed to the rhetorical message of much of current devotional literature. A survey of an English scholar further presents a selection of 13 major nineteenth-century English and American science and religion controversialists. [End Page 83] Click for larger view View full resolution Table 1. Inventory of Sixteen Key New Science Titles Held by Eleven Old Northwest Social Libraries, 1861-1892 [End Page 85] Works of a majority of these eminent disputants were held in seven of 13 social library catalogs of the Old Northwest's Ohio Western Reserve (Table 1). Reserve science subcollection generally ranged from 4 to 8 percent of holdings. In addition to "strict" general social libraries, other Old Northwest print depositories, founded mostly after 1860, included at least 11 private science and engineering society collections. Of an approximate 49 library print catalogs, dating from 1860 to 1892, in the Old Northwest states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan, the most duplicated 16 key science titles in 11 collections presented with accessible and comparable catalog subject organization are presented here for survey. (Table 1).4 Ninety-four stock identities of these core works reflect, in varying measure, evolutionary themes in the biophysical sciences and in astronomy, ethnology, and topics of popular science in which a number of seminal studies were later to appear. Less prominent titles...