Part I – Education
by Nadia Makuc
In Reverend Adonijah Bidwell’s probate inventory (1784) – which comprises the blueprint for the collection of the Bidwell House Museum today and serves as a freeze-frame of life in the late eighteenth century – he is recorded as having just more than 45 pounds and four shillings worth of books (the equivalent of roughly $11,700 in 2026). To put this in perspective, Bidwell’s first salary was 160 pounds annually, and he ended his life with 2,282 pounds worth of property (according to the Proprietor of Township No. 1). How many people today have nearly two percent of their net worth in books? Especially for his time, this is a significant collection of books, and it certainly would have been one of the largest collections in town. In Colonial America, extremely large libraries would have had over 200 books, but even more than 50 was impressive! [1] Bidwell’s library would have fallen on the smaller side of what was considered large, but it is all the more remarkable considering that he lived on what was then the frontier.
Lacking the amenities of today’s illustrious Monterey Public Library, Bidwell likely had the most books of anyone in Township No. 1 – but this was due to his wealth and role as spiritual leader, and not because others did not value reading or were illiterate. Thanks to Puritan theological influence, literacy rates in New England were higher than elsewhere in the colonies and even broadly across Europe at the time. [2] Essential to Protestantism is the belief that the individual has a right and responsibility to read and interpret the Bible. Puritans believed that this individual interpretation could not be done with proper order and saw schools as essential for promoting religious lifestyle. [3] Universities were established to train ministers, who themselves were not so much priests as teachers – all said and done, the sermon varies little from the lecture. This is especially true for Puritans, whose worship services were less liturgical and more instructional, meaning that ministers had to be well trained in rhetoric.
Puritans were also fighting Antinomianism, a belief popular of the seventeenth century that people are saved by faith alone and do not need to obey moral or religious law. [4] These believers opposed university education because they saw the elite clergy as a barrier to relationship with God. This was in opposition to the mainstream Puritan view that saw education as a means to excel in vocation and advance in conversion, and fueled what is today’s robust American education system.
A forerunner of its time, the Massachusetts Bay Colony made education compulsory in 1642, and the first American taxpayer-funded public school opened in Dedham in 1644 (for more about education in Monterey specifically, you can look at previous Bidwell Lore). Education was, in a way, inseparable from belief: take, for example, the New England Primer, a learning-to-read textbook with such examples as “in Adam’s fall we sinned all” for the letter “A” (and even “the idle Fool is whipt at school” for “F”). [5] The cultural milieu Bidwell grew up in was incited by religion to value reading, and so Bidwell himself as minister was a great example of the pinnacle of a well-read man.
As minister, Bidwell would be the most well-educated person in town, and indeed, as a 1740 Yale graduate, he was well trained to preach on the Bible. While Yale College (only officially Yale University in 1887) was founded merely 39 years before Bidwell’s attendance, it quickly gained prominence as a training center for Southern New England and developed its own theological flair. [6] Yale was one of only four institutions of higher education in America and had gained a reputation as a more orthodox alternative to many of its Congregationalist founders’ alma mater, Harvard. Bidwell would have received a rigorous training in Biblical Studies, with Yale notoriously known for teaching Hebrew to all year levels.
Bidwell would have used many books for his rigorous education at Yale, but one of the young college’s greatest assets was their growing library. Three major gifts established Yale’s library, including its namesake, Elihu Yale, in 1718. [7] By the time of the Revolutionary War, there were around 4,000 volumes – though thievery did a number on their collection in the early days.
The library’s books included primarily theological and classical literature. Over time, the library’s collection diversified, and shortly after Bidwell’s time there, Yale had a protest in support of introducing more English literature. [8] Only after he graduated was there a significant transition from predominantly theological to books about the arts and sciences.
After Bidwell’s graduation, he had a decade during which he served as the Chaplain of the Connecticut Militia Fleet before being selected as the minister for Township No. 1. Upon coming to his post as minister, he likely brought some books with him, but considering his access to the Yale library and his time in between travelling, it seems most of his collection built during his later life.
In two weeks we will take a look at Bidwell’s beliefs and how that helped determine the types of books he owned.
1. Joe W. Kraus, “Private Libraries in Colonial America,” The Journal of Library History (1974-1987), Vol. 9, No. 1 (Jan., 1974), pp. 31-53 (University of Texas Press)
2. Jack Lynch, “Every Man Able to Read: Literacy in Early America,” https://research.colonialwilliamsburg.org/Foundation/journal/Winter11/literacy.cfm
3. Clifford K. Shipton, “The Puritan Influence in Education,” https://journals.psu.edu/phj/article/download/22609/22378/22448.
4. Ibid.
5. Patricia Miletich, “Religion and Literacy in Colonial New New England.” https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/lesson-plan/religion-and-literacy-colonial-new-england
6. Judith Schiff, “A Brief History of Yale,” https://guides.library.yale.edu/yalehistory
7. David Alan Richards, “I Give These Books: The History of Yale University Library,” https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/10.3366/lih.2024.0166.
8. Thomas Keys, “The Colonial Library and the Development of Sectional Differences in the American Colonies” https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/614277?casa_token=HlcUYoPKGz0AAAAA:QdySiEDNGsdWqoq-wHde9al1CR70FhW3K-IVSaouO-SEtR6ZiQCPchvEyJNPbf70NT_P-3sagw