WORCESTER — The American Antiquarian Society has received what it calls “an unprecedented gift” of more than 18,000 items of rare 18th and 19th century ephemera including flyers, prints, broadsides and even steamboat schedules.
The collection was assembled over several decades by the late Stephen Davies Paine, an investment counselor and museum benefactor, and has been given to the Society in his memory. The gift “is among the largest the Society has had in its 213-year history,” the Society said in a news release on Monday.
The materials include a wide variety of printed items used in daily life, and provide “an important window into the history of American enterprise and the vast social, economic, and political changes that took place in the 19th century,” the Society said…