The provenance of two battered books

If memory serves, there are seven copies of this two-volume set in the Lucas County Historical Society collection --- Theodore M. Stuart's 1913 "Past and Present of Lucas and Wayne Counties, Iowa." 

Lucas County's first in-print history dates from 1881; this is the second, published in tandem with similar material from our neighbor to the south, Wayne County. Volume 1 contains separate histories of the counties and Volume 2, biographies from both mixed in helter-skelter fashion.

Stuart, the editor, was a prominent Chariton attorney in his mid-70s in 1913 who perhaps had undertaken this as a retirement project. 

Anyone who wishes to read the volumes in this 21st Century day and age doesn't even need hard copy to do so --- they have been digitalized at "Google Book" and are freely accessible there to one and all.

Of all our sets, this one is in the worst condition --- the binding is broken, some pages have come loose and the leather is deteriorating. So it rarely sees the light of day, securely wrapped in archival storage. But it does have one distinction --- these two volumes were the first items accessioned by the historical society when it began the process of launching a collection back in 1965 and bear the numbers 1965.1a and 1965.1b. Object No. 1965.2 was considerably larger, a fainting couch still on display in the A.J. Stephens House parlor.

I hadn't been aware of the distinguished history of these battered books until this week when I unwrapped them to try out a new form of archival container and then traced them through the catalog by object number.

There are typewritten notes inside the front covers of both volumes that tell us they were owned originally by Richard A. Hasselquist (1850-1932), a once-prominent Lucas Countyan, who passed them on to his son, Elmer Hasselquist (1876-1973). Elmer, who was living in St. Louis during old age, passed the volumes on to a friend who still lived in Chariton, Charles A. Rowe (1890-1965), who operated a jewelry store on the square until retirement in 1955, and Charles passed them on to the historical society in honor of the Hasselquists.

The condition of the volumes tells us that they were used extensively during the first 50 years or so of their history --- earning the retirement they're now enjoying. And yes, it would be possible to rebind them. But there's really no reason to do so. Who knows what the situation will be in another 50 years? We'll not be around, but hopefully these old books still will be.