Image: Receipt for a Library Company share, 1733.

We continue our monthly “Shareholder Spotlight” series by taking a closer look at Share #190 and its first owner, Susanna Carmalt.

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 #190

This share was first issued to Susanna Carmalt on April 6, 1769. Like a number of previously profiled shares, that puts her among the shareholders of the Union Library Company, which merged into the Library Company on this date.

Image: Bookplates of the Amicable Library, the Association Library, and the Union Library Company (1769).

The merger added additional books and 276 new shareholders to the Library Company, and it also added the Library Company’s first two women shareholders: Susanna Carmalt received share #190, and Sarah Emlen received share #212.

That technically makes Susanna the very first woman shareholder of the Library Company, but the new shareholders were added to the Library Company’s rolls in alphabetical order, so the designation of “first” simply reflects the order of the two surnames.

Women had certainly borrowed books from the Library Company before 1769 using male relatives’ shares, but Carmalt and Emlen are the first known to have held Library Company shares in their own names. A third woman, Sarah Wistar, was approved as a new Library Company shareholder just a few weeks later.

Image: Susanna Carmalt’s name appears in a list of the Union Library Company shareholders who received new Library Company share certificates after their institution merged into the Library Company in 1769. Share Record Book A, Volume 171, Library Company of Philadelphia records (MSS00270).

By the time Susanna Carmalt became a shareholder of the Library Company, she was a widow with several children. Her husband James Carmalt, a merchant, had apparently passed away in 1765.[i]

And although her share in the Library Company came through her association with the Union Library Company, it appears that her husband had first been a member of the Association Library Company of Philadelphia. The Association Library Company had merged into the Union Library Company shortly before that institution merged into the Library Company. The Association Library’s 1765 catalogue of its holdings includes a list of 107 signers to its earlier articles of association, and that list includes Susanna’s husband James Carmalt.[ii]

Regardless, it appears that Susanna remained a Library Company shareholder for the rest of her life.

The share passed to its next owner in 1819, after Susanna had passed away. Her heirs Mary Mitchell, James Matlack, and Caleb Carmalt, “attorney in fact of Timothy Matlack Jr.,” sold the share to Jonathan Carmalt, Jr. on June 7, 1819.

The share remained in the family through several more owners, and has been owned by twelve people total in its history.

Not yet a shareholder?

Share #190 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 Susanna Carmalt’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 [email protected].

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[i] James Carmalt’s occupation is listed in the minute recording his and Susannah’s marriage in U.S. Quaker Meeting Records, 1681-1935, courtesy of AncestryLibrary.com. James’s death is noted in “Genealogical Records Copied from the Bible of Thomas Say,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography Vol. 29, No. 2 (1905), 221.

[ii] A Catalogue of Books, Belonging to the Association Library Company of Philadelphia . . ., Volume 11, Library Company of Philadelphia records (MSS00270).