page_title: John Carter Brown Library
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: John Carter Brown Library / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Interior of the MacMillan Reading Room at the John Carter Brown Library
context_page_description: The John Carter Brown Library is an independently funded research library of history and the humanities on the campus of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. The library's rare book, manuscript, and map collections encompass a variety of topics related to the history of European exploration and colonization of the New World until circa 1825.
context_section_description: The Library originated in the mid-nineteenth century when it began as the private collection of John Carter Brown (1797–1874) who conceived of it being a collection of books written about the discovery of the New World, rather than a gentleman's financial investment or a rich man's adornment. Brown began collecting in 1846. After John Carter Brown's death, his wife Sophia Augusta Brown continued collecting with the advisement of John Russell Bartlett (who served as an informal librarian) and Rush Hawkins. This collecting passion was transmitted to his son, John Nicholas Brown (1861–1900). Until John Nicholas Brown's untimely death, the John Carter Brown Library was kept in a special fireproof room in the Brown family house in the 1792 Nightingale-Brown House. The will of John Nicholas Brown directed that within four years of his death, his trustees were to establish the collection, together with a building to house it, at a permanent site of their choice. They selected Brown University (named in honor of John Carter Brown's father, Nicholas Brown, Jr.).
caption: Interior of the MacMillan Reading Room at the John Carter Brown Library
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