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to Deane (dated Providence 20 November 1880) Bartlett states ‘I am desirous to know in what public and private libraries copies of the Bay Psalm Book are to be found. Can you give me any information beyond that attained from Mr. Justin Winsor. His list as follows…’. The last item in Justin Winsor’s list as transcribed by Bartlett for Deane is: 8 Mr. Winsor says he has been told that Mrs. Sam. T. Armstrong of Boston has a copy, but does not know it for a fact. Do you know Mrs. Armstrong, and whether, if she has the book, she is a lady who would like to part with it. This item leaps out from the first Bartlett letter – a unique men- tion of an unrecorded copy of the Bay Psalm Book owned by Mrs. Samuel T. Armstrong. In his second letter to Charles Deane, dated 21 August 1882, Bartlett updates the list of known copies, omit- ting mention of the Mrs. Armstrong copy and adding the James Lennox copy in its place. Of the five copies bequeathed to the Old South Church, Boston, by Thomas Prince in 1758 two copies were released (or in Justin Winsor’s phrase ‘surrendered’) to Edward Crowninshield and George Livermore in 1849 by Samuel T. Armstrong who in his role as deacon of the Old South Church had joint custody of the Prince library. The two books were received in exchange for the cheap rebinding of two of the other remaining copies in the hands of the church. In 1860 a third Prince/Old South Church copy was exchanged for two books from the library of Nathaniel Bradstreet Shurtle V . Samuel Armstrong had married Abigail Walker of Charlestown in 1812. Would his wife have retained a church copy in his posses- sion for thirty years after her husband’s death in 1850? In 1876 the Old South Church tried to retrieve the Shurtle V copy but lost the court case due to the statute of limitations, so on this basis did Mrs. Armstrong feel safe enough after 1876 to reveal the existence of her book to whoever told Justin Winsor? Although a ‘Mrs. Armstrong’ copy might initially be dismissed to, and cataloguer of, the John Carter Brown University Library who purchased their copy of the Bay Psalm Book in 1881; Justin Winsor (1831–97) was Librarian of Harvard University Library, which also owned a copy of the Bay Psalm Book .
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