Image: Receipt for a Library Company share, 1733.

We continue our monthly “Shareholder Spotlight” series by taking a closer look at Share #105 and its ninth owner, Emma M. Bouvier Drexel (1833-1883).

Shareholders have always been the backbone of the Library Company of Philadelphia. Starting with the first group of fifty tradesmen who formed the library in 1731, shareholders have provided crucial financial support each year for our mission to “pour forth benefits for the common good.”

We keep careful track of who has owned each historic share, and our list of 9,800+ shareholders includes signers of the Declaration and Constitution, merchants, doctors, soldiers, scientists, artists, philanthropists, politicians, and much more.

Share #105

This share was first issued to Daniel Williams on August 25, 1752.

Williams had purchased the share about 18 months earlier on December 14, 1750, but it was not recorded by then-Secretary Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) until August 1752.

Image: Detail from Share Record Book A, Volume 171, Library Company of Philadelphia records (MSS00270).

Williams later served as the Treasurer of the Library Company from 1766 through early 1769. In that role, he would certainly have been involved in discussions about whether to accept the Union Library Company’s proposal to merge with the Library Company in 1769.

Williams eventually willed the share to his son, Daniel Williams, Jr. The share passed through a series of other owners before it was acquired by Emma M. Bouvier (1833-1883) on October 6, 1855.

Emma owned her Library Company share for the next five years.

She came from a wealthy Catholic family in Philadelphia. She was the daughter of French-born cabinetmaker Michel Bouvier (1792-1874) and his second wife, Louise Clifford Vernou Bouvier (1811-1872). Michel’s furniture business was successful, but he made a fortune in land speculation. The family lived in a mansion on North Broad Street near Thompson Street.[i]

The Library Company’s records provide little detail about Emma’s involvement while she owned share #105.

However, she did not maintain her Library Company share after she married. Just four days before her wedding to financier Francis Anthony Drexel (1824-1885), she sold her Library Company share to her younger sister, Alexine E. Bouvier (1837-1914). The transaction was witnessed by “F. A. Drexel,” no doubt Emma’s future husband and Alexine’s future brother-in-law.[ii]

Emma certainly would have been busy after her wedding; she immediately became step-mother to Francis’s two young children. Later, she became known for her extensive philanthropy.[iii]

Image: Emma Bouvier inscribed this book’s front flyleaf with a note that it was “from G. W. C.” The bookplate below the inscription shows that it was part of St. Catherine’s Hall Library before it was purchased by the Library Company in 1998. Friedrich Schoedler, The Book of Nature (Philadelphia, 1853).

Emma’s sister Alexine Bouvier maintained her Library Company share for nine years.

Of course, the Civil War broke out just one year after Alexine became a shareholder. If she visited the library in person during the war years, she might have seen the map set up in the reading room with pins showing the changing positions of the armies.[iv]

Alexine never married. She sold share #105 to Samuel R. Shipley on June 23, 1869. The share has been owned by fourteen people total in its history.

Not yet a shareholder?

Share #105 is currently available. We work hard to match potential shareholders with historic shares that match their interests, and we would love to match you with Emma Bouvier Drexel’s share or another option.

You can become a Library Company shareholder with an initial gift of $500. To learn more, visit our website or reach out to our Development Office at development@librarycompany.org.

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[i] Chairs made by Michel Bouvier are now part of the collections at the Athenaeum of Philadelphia and the Brooklyn Museum. Through one of Emma’s brothers, Michel is also a great-great grandfather of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis (1929-1994).

[ii] Emma and Francis A. Drexel married on April 10, 1860, four days after the share transfer. “Francis A. Drexel weds Emma Bouvier,” Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, https://www.katharinedrexel.org/timeline/francis-a-drexel-weds-emma-bouvier/ (accessed March 17, 2025). For Emma’s share transfer to Alexine, see page 424 in Share Record Book D, Volume 174, Library Company of Philadelphia records (MSS00270).

[iii] One of her step-daughters grew up to become Saint Katharine Drexel (1858-1955). For more on Emma’s philanthropy, see Mary J. Oates, “The Role of Laywomen in American Catholic Philanthropy, 1820-1920,” U.S. Catholic Historian, vol. 9, no. 3 (summer 1990), 249-260.

[iv] “At the Instance of Benjamin Franklin”: A Brief History of the Library Company of Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 2015), 55.