For any library, research center, or esteemed university, it is always a blessing to receive a large endowment or donation. It’s even better when those valuable donations have some inherent historical worth as well, as their value will only increase over time. Well Princeton University has recently received the largest gift in the history of the 269-year-old college, and it is pretty amazing.
William H. Scheide recently passed away and in his will, he left a very large collection of books and manuscripts to his alma matter. Scheide graduated from Princeton University in 1946 and lived to be 100 years old. Over his long life he amassed a large collection of rare books and has donated many of them to the school. Officials estimate that the entire collection of 2,500 books and manuscripts are worth a cool $300 million dollars.
This collection is very large and filled with many amazing books. There are six first edition prints of the Bible and even the Gutenberg Bible which was printed in 1455. Additionally there are also a few first edition Shakespeare plays, letters from Ulysses S. Grant that were sent at the end of the Civil War, and a signed speech from Abraham Lincoln. But there is just so much more.
The collection also has an early George Washington journal, documents from the Revolutionary War, early journals from explorers to the New World, Bach manuscripts, some notes from Mozart, Schubert, and Wagner, and even a signed Beethoven sketchbook.
Scheide’s grandfather started this collection and it took over 150 years to finally amass all these rare documents. The people over at Princeton are probably pretty ecstatic as this collections is truly incredible. Most of the collection will appropriately reside in the Scheide Library section of the schools library.
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