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Books found in dumpster belonged to Thomas Jefferson
- pandasun 8y agoI wonder what they auctioned for. Does anyone know?
- nooch 8y agoIn the article it says $8000 but that was before he confirmed they were Jefferson's
- pandasun 8y agoHmm, I could have sworn the URL linked to a shorter article when I read it. Or maybe I just missed that part. Thanks!
- rtkwe 8y agoThat wouldn't be too surprising. HN mods often change links to point to more original sources (sometimes to the detriment I think. eg when moving from a well done summary with commentary to the dense original report)
- ataturk 8y agoDumb inheritors threw out "old books and photos" because all they could understand was the $$$ in the accounts.
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoLesson: Give your famous books to a library collection before you die, and your ignorant grandnephew (or whomever) throws them in the dumpster to be destroyed by rain.
- 11thEarlOfMar 8y agoMakes me wonder how many treasures we lose because they aren't discovered.
- SpecialistEMT 8y agoMost of them for sure.
- mottosso 8y agoIf it isn't discovered, is it still a treasure?
- nashashmi 8y ago$8k for books found in a dumpster? Jackpot! The rest of the wealth can be said was rightly divided between everybody else. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pearl_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pearl_(novel)
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ak39 8y agoI've always considered books just too precious to be binned or thrown away. My dad was a teacher so books were all we had, devouring whatever came our way. Sometimes rereading the same works again. We moved a lot so finding a library in the new town would be akin to finding Aladdin's cave for us. It's now a mild OCD condition in me when others don't look after my books (dog ears or folded pages. Gets my f'cking goat!). I silently judge others for not looking after their own books (jealously petting my own book with endearment). I've still kept my obsolete tech books - safe asylum. How do people find the nerve to throw a book away? How?!
- pjc50 8y agoQuite often when someone dies without interested relatives, a cursory sweep of the house is done for obvious valuables and then everything else is thrown away. Appears to be what's happened here. Kind of compounds the tragedy, but in a world of plentiful stuff and expensive real estate it's hard to avoid.
- dubya 8y agoEven with an interested relative, sometimes there's just too much stuff. My father-in-law left a basement full of computer stuff. There was some Heathkit hardware, TRS-80s, a couple of AT&T 3B2's, tons of PCs, a Bell Labs MAC Tutor, old calculators, thousands of CDs and floppies, piles and piles of printouts of old code, plus books. Some of it was probably valuable to someone, somewhere, but it was a full room, chest deep with stuff, and just hauling it all out took several days. Nearly all of the hardware went to an electronics recycler.
- LyndsySimon 8y agoEstate auctions kinda fill this gap, if there's enough "stuff". It's not uncommon to see boxes or even pallets of loosely-related possessions sell as a lot, where even they buyer probably doesn't know what all they're getting. I've acquired a fairly large stash of firearms parts this way. There are a few valuable individual items, but in aggregate it's probably worth at least $15-20k. I probably have $250 invested in all of it, and it all fits in a single (heavy) moving box. I've also gotten quite a few valuable fountain pens and parts for them the same way. Once I bought a ratty old desk for $50 because the drawers were full of office supplies that I wanted, including a couple of vintage Waterman pens. I dumped them into a box and gave the desk to the other person that was bidding on it so I didn't have to haul it home. She was ecstatic to get the desk for free, and I was happy to get ~$1k worth of vintage pens for almost nothing.
- nimbius 8y agoIt may be controversial to say this as an American, but I believe Thomas Jefferson is easily the greatest candidate for founding father that deserves to be forgotten. - Jefferson sired six children with Sally Hemmings, a slave on his Monticello estate. - Jeffersions children were put to work in the fields, and never freed for decades. - Jefferson himself whipped his own children. - Jefferson intentionally avoided a strong opinion on emancipation and maintained a negative opinion on it frequently. He was accustomed to the opulence of Monticello and without slaves to run it, Jefferson knew his status in the merchant class would be diminished. - Jefferson died in roughly two million dollars of modern debt. Most attributable to his lavish livestyle. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-dark-side-of-thomas-jefferson-35976004/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-dark-side-of-thom...
- vonzeppelin 8y ago- Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence - He drafted the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom - He served as the third President of the United States - United States Military Academy was established during his presidency - Jefferson doubled the size of the United States during his presidency - He made sure US presence was established in the Louisiana territory - President Jefferson abolished the slave trade - He made an important contribution to the Library of Congress - Thomas Jefferson founded the University of Virginia - He wrote a book titled Notes on the State of Virginia https://learnodo-newtonic.com/thomas-jefferson-accomplishments https://learnodo-newtonic.com/thomas-jefferson-accomplishmen...
- MisterBastahrd 8y agoNone of that rebuts how he lived his personal life. He decided that emancipation was not as important as keeping humans as slaves for labor and pleasure.
- michaelcampbell 8y agoTrue, and how is it relevant? He did good, he did non good. As does everyone.
- gtycomb 8y agoSome of the great writings are not in a dumpster but right in front of our eyes if only we knew it. A copy of J. S. Bach's Goldberg Variations sitting in front of everyone until 1974, in the hands of the director of the conservatory of music in Strasbourgh and then in the hands of a professor of music, it had in the inside cover fourteen canons in Bach's own handwriting, elucidating Bach's architecture like never before. An Italian visitor chanced upon the score and suggested these were Bach's own handwritten lines ...
- michaelcampbell 8y agoIt's interesting to me how we, as humans, ascribe more value to things based on previous ownership. Why is a watch worth $35000 if President <X> owned it, but only $350 if not? Is it not the same watch?
- sandworm101 8y agoThe founding fathers have a mythical status in the US. Many observers liken it to religious worship (google "civic religion") with the founders akin to the original disciples of the faith. America's early puritan, Protestant, roots also give importance to books. The act of reading books and then writing about them is almost a form of prayer (see the Latin v. English bibles debate). So a book owned by a founding father is precious. A book modified and written upon by a founding father is a sacred text. In addition, the american legal tradition gives great importance to the concept of original intent, understanding the mind of a document's author. Important documents such as the US constitution, and therefore many modern day legal debates, are understood through the lens of historical context. Knowing the books read by those who wrote such documents gives one argumentative power in the modern context. So these sacred books are a source of modern day power, adding to their perceived value. I want to know why he moved the first pages to the middle. Is that some masonic thing?
- throwawaymsft 8y agoAdditional meaning and connection are emotionally valuable (especially when rare or irreproducible). I assume you’d prefer to have Newton’s Principia, Turing’s papers, or your grandfather’s watch vs. a reproduction, even if the practical value of the information is the same.
- SamReidHughes 8y agoYou don't want to know how much a watch is worth if Paul Newman wore it.
- icantdrive55 8y agoPaul Newman gave one of those Daytonas away to his daughter's boyfriend. He was working on a backyard treehouse years ago. It ended up selling for 17 million recently. I do find it amazing how the wealthy spend their "hard" earned money. Yes--quotes. If I had my way, they would be taxed heavily, like WW2 tax rates. My only satisfaction is knowing that Rolex has a movement not made exclusively by Rolex, and the fat arm it will end up on will never have the charisma of Newman.
- HenryTheHorse 8y agoI know Jefferson is complicated, but I encourage everyone to visit Monticello (his estate in Virginia) and see his library* . The man was obsessed with reading (and gardening). * On a related note, I'd also strongly encourage people visiting NYC to visit the JP Morgan Library. It's spectacular.
- Yhippa 8y agoIf any of you managed to get near DC I recommend checking out his library at the LoC: https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/thomas-jeffersons-library/ https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/thomas-jeffersons-library/. Despite it's age it's very fascinating. You can learn a lot about a man by his books.
- cestith 8y agoAlso interesting in that part of the country for lovers of the printed word is Book Thing of Baltimore. It may be helpful for those trying to find a place other than the trash for their own old books, too. http://bookthing.org/ http://bookthing.org/
- mncharity 8y agoUnder similar circumstances, I ended up with the one-page 1740 Treasurer's Account for the Town of Cambridge, Massachusetts Bay Colony.[1] A neighbor died, and a relative came by and rapidly dumpstered their apartment. Including a stack of family photo albums. Now, I'd a childhood experience of family sorting things into two boxes: "toys to donate to the school sale", and "childhood photos and keepsakes". Think "all your eggs in one basket". The wrong box was then dropped off at the school. A few hours later, it had been categorized as trash, thrown out, and was unrecoverably lost. So I salvaged some of the albums in the dumpster. And eventually got in touch with the family to ask, "are your sure?". They were. But before I got around to throwing them out again, I found the document inside a folded photo card thing. And wondered if there had been more in the dumpster, among that which I didn't salvage. And if I died today, it would likely end up back in a dumpster. Need to find it a better home. [1] http://www.vendian.org/1740/ http://www.vendian.org/1740/
- driverdan 8y agoHave you contacted the Cambridge Historical Society to see if they want it or know of an org that would?
- mncharity 8y agoMany years ago. At the time, it didn't seem like they were set up for it. Time to ask again. Other options include Harvard (but I've encountered town-and-gown "oh, not Harvard!" sentiment), Boston Athenæum, and Boston Public Library?
- WalterBright 8y ago> Including a stack of family photo albums. How sad. At least one can photograph the pages with a phone, as keeping those would be costless.
- mncharity 8y ago> How sad. I recall them as saying it was mostly "other" families. A complexity that put it way over effort budget for me. > At least one can photograph the pages with a phone, :) Year 2000. Thus the pieced-together flatbed scans.