Introduction. Section 1. Forming early collecting institutions (early nineteenth century). "An equal taste for antiquities" : Reverend William Bentley and the American Antiquarian Society / Thomas Knoles -- "A few monstrous great snakes" : Daniel Bowen and the Columbian Museum, 1789-1816 / Peter Benes -- Eathan Allen Greenwood : museum collector and proprietor / Georgia B. Barnhill. Section 2. Forming early collecting institutions (mid and late nineteenth century). A family enterprise : collecting Deerfield's past / Donald R. Friary -- "This quaint Abbotsford-like residence" : Indian Hill, West Newbury, Massachusetts / Jane C. Nylander. Section. 3. Specialty collectors : china and furniture. "Bought...of nobody for almost nothing" : Anne Allen Ives and china collecting in nineteenth-century New England / Thomas S. Michie -- Hartford's role in the origins of antiques collecting in America / William N. Hosley. Section 4. Specialty collectors : fauna and American labor history. Fur into feathers : Manly Hardy and his collection of North American birds / William B. Krohn and Marilyn R. Massaro -- Labor artifacts / Scott Molloy. Section 5. New England collectors abroad. The Wallis Collection in the Peabody Exxes Museum : putting a nineteenth-century travel collection in cultural contest / Christina Hellmich. Section 6. Motivation, collection theory, ethnicity. Colonial relics, nativism, and the DAR Loan Exhibition of 1892 / Robert P. Emlen -- Sacred relics in the cause of liberty : a Civil War memorial cabinet and the Victorian logic of collecting / Tamara Plakins Thornton -- History, memory, and the appropriation of the American Indian past : a family affair / Judy Kertesz
