LOCAL

Redwood Library receives donation from collection of RI Historian Laureate Patrick Conley

Daily News staff

NEWPORT — The Redwood Library & Athenaeum has been selected by Patrick Conley, Historian Laureate of Rhode Island, to house a substantial portion of the Dr. Patrick T. Conley Library consisting of scholarly works on all phases and aspects of American history.

Conley's donation includes his most prized scholarly books in American history, ranging from exploration and discovery, the colonial period and the American Revolutionary era.

Dr. Patrick Conley, left, is joined by Benedict Leca, executive director of Redwood Library.

The latter section is particularly strong because of Conley’s chairmanship of the Rhode Island Bicentennial of Independence Commission (ri76), the state’s bicentennial of the Constitution and Bill of Rights Commission, the Rhode Island state bicentennial observance and the United States Constitution Council.

The gift also contains scholarly sections on the Early National Period, the Civil War and Reconstruction, the Gilded Age, the Progressive Era, the New Deal and the post-World War II era. It also contains works on Regional Americana, especially New England, the South, and West, Ethnicity and Immigration, Politics and Government, Biography, Religion, especially American Catholic history, Economic History, American Historiography, Military History and Social History, including Sports.

Finally, the donation consists of over 100 recent Rhode Island titles, most of which were published from 1974 to the present by Conley’s Rhode Island Publications Society. Conley had made earlier large donations to Notre Dame (200 rare 16th century vellum-bound books), Johnson & Wales University (3,000 volumes, including many of his wife’s culinary books) and Roger Williams University (6,000 volumes of general American and European history).

Started by Conley in 1960, when he became a reference librarian in the Social Science Reading Room at the library of the University of Notre Dame, where he was studying for his masters and doctoral degrees in American history, the collection was gradually enlarged and strengthened during Conley’s 30-year tenure as a professor at Providence College (1963-1993) and especially during his career as a used and rare book dealer from 1963 through 1998.

In that capacity, he handled over 300,000 volumes, reserving the choice, scholarly works on American history for his personal library collection.

“I chose the Redwood primarily for its prestige and because it is an American literary and architectural icon," Conley said in a prepared statement. "I also felt that historic Newport, one of the USA’s oldest cities, was an appropriate setting given the continuing interest of its residents in American History; and finally, because of the initiatives of the library director, Benedict Leca.”

Redwood Executive Director Benedict Leca said, “As the historic intellectual center of Newport with a 300-year history, we have long been the recipient of significant book collections, but this donation of more than 8,000 volumes by Professor Conley is of another order.

"Coupled with our ongoing acquisition of primary material of early Americana, this curated collection of secondary critical literature adds to what we already have to make the Redwood a premier research stop for students and scholars interested in all aspects of American history and culture across four centuries.”
https://www.newportri.com/story/news/local/2021/07/29/redwood-library-receives-donation-ri-historian-patrick-conley/5400896001/
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