Among the nearly 45,000 pamphlets in Princeton Seminary’s rare book collection is the Sprague Collection of Early American Religious Pamphlets. Collected by William B. Sprague (1795-1876) during his lifetime, the collection includes sermons, addresses, essays, reports, and accounts of theological controversies dating from the early Colonial period to post-Civil War America. Sprague was an early alum of the Seminary, graduating in 1819. He served as a pastor in Albany, NY for 40 years and was prodigious in his output of printed works. This includes his massive nine-volume account of American Protestantism called The Annals of the American Pulpit (1858-1869) for which he collected more than 20,000 pamphlets and early printed works in America.
Sprague’s personal reference collection was donated to Princeton Seminary starting in 1839 and, according to Archibald Alexander, was the most valuable single donation the library had ever received from an individual. The collection continues to serve as a comprehensive collection of printed works that illuminate and illustrate the history of American Protestantism from the 17th to 19th centuries.
