The Sanitary Fairs Collection consists largely of ephemera and manuscripts documenting the efforts made by citizens to raise awareness and funds for the United States Sanitary Commission. Most of the material is from the Great Central Fair held in Philadelphia in June 1864, and includes circulars letters, forms, handbills, correspondence, and miscellaneous printed material generated by the various committees set up to collect objects and financial donations for the fair, and to arrange and staff the fair's sales booths and exhibits. Two additional folders of material for the Relics, Curiosities, and Autographs committee have examples of the autographs (dating 1749-1851) that were sold at their booth and remain in their special printed enclosures from the fair. The collection holds the correspondence files of one particular office, the Committee for Labor, Incomes and Revenues, whose chair and treasurer were, respectively, Philadelphia merchants L. Montgomery Bond and John W. Claghorn. The collection also contains limited ephemera from fairs in Albany, Baltimore, Brooklyn, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Elmira, Indianapolis, New York, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Muscatine, Iowa., The McAllister Collection's Ribbons and Textiles Collection (McA 100090.F) holds a box of ribbons and badges from the Great Central Fair. The Library Company's Anne Hampton Brewster Papers has an Abraham Lincoln manuscript, with attendant donor correspondence and certificate, which Brewster acquired at the Great Central Fair's New Jersey Department, Arms and Trophies Table. The Library Company and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania each have a full run of the Great Sanitary Fair's newspaper, Our daily fare, which was published from Wednesday, June 8, through Tuesday, June 21, 1864., John A. McAllister was an antiquarian collector living in Philadelphia.
Creator
McAllister, John A. (John Allister), 1822-1896, collector
Date
1749
Location
Library Company of Philadelphia | Books & Other Texts MSS McA 5781.F
