MEMOIR OF THE REV. JOHN RODGERS, D.D. LATE PASTOR OF THE WALL STREET AND BRICK CHURCHES, IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK. (Spine title: "Memoir of Rodgers.") [Reverend John Rodgers.]

Ex-church library copy. Abridgement of the original 1813 edition (as stated upon title page). 240 pages. Hardcover: H 15.5cm x L 10.5cm. Contemporary blue cloth; spine head chipped but with spine's gilt stamping still bright; board corners bumped and worn; patches of surface cloth loss at front board's lower right. Ink ownership inscription (probably early-mid twentieth century) at top of front pastedown; affixed to front free endpaper recto is contemporary mid-19th century bookplate "Church Library of Bethsalem and Burton's Hill. Boligee, Ala." with paragraph of lending rules and concluding "W. Sym. Johnston, | Librarian." (cursory search for a similarly initialed Boligee resident was unsuccessful) - no other exterior or interior institutional marks present; varied interior foxing/toning; pencil doodle of young woman on rear free endpaper verso. Binding is firm. The church library bookplate is interesting for two reasons: {#1} that, although without an imprint, it was likely contracted to a local printer of which there were but a handful in 1840s/1850s in west central Alabama (probably printed in either Eutaw or Tuscaloosa but possibly Demopolis too) and {#2} being a relic of Boligee's historic Beth Salem Presbyterian Church which, built in 1835, was among the earliest structures in the small Greene County settlement. The Library of Congress catalog cites the original 1813 edition of MEMOIR OF THE REV. JOHN RODGERS as having 432 pages but, at H 22cm, was an octavo volume; this duodecimo edition has a rather compressed typeset so the abridgement may not be as significant as the altered pagination may suggest.…