Reference code
DWL/SS
Level of description
Fonds
Title
Samuel Say Papers
Date
1717-1995
Extent and Medium
:One volume of pasted-in documents, further loose papers
Scope and content
A large collection of MS letters and other documents concerning the affairs of Reverend. Samuel Say (1676-1743) and his family. The folio volume (DWL/SS/12.107) contains 267 numbered items, there are 37 loose items (DWL/SS/12.108). The folio volume includes notes on the contents by Revd. Samuel Say Toms (d. 1834), who placed them in the volume (12.107). Toms also includes items that came to his hand following the deaths of his father and eldest and youngest sisters and that pertain to them.
At the end of 12.108 are inserted some pedigrees, principally drawn up from information contained in the papers.
Accruals
not expected
System of arrangement
as accessioned
Publication note
Revd. Samuel Say Toms (d. 1834) loaned the collection to the editor of the Monthly Repository and copious extracts were published in vols. 4 and 5, 1809-1810, of the Monthly Repository (see Publication notes throughout for references). Other papers were published in whole or in part by Mr. Basil Cozens-Hardy as Letters incidental to Samuel Say’s call to Westminster, 1734 in the Transactions of the Congregational Historical Society, vol. 19, 1960-64. Some of the letters from Isaac Watts were also printed (no doubt from the Monthly Repository) in Thomas Milnes: The life, times, and correspondence of the Rev. Isaac Watts, D.D., 1834. A few items have been lost since they were printed in the Monthly Repository and there is a note on p.80 of the volume, by S.S. Toms, that four letters of Philip Doddridge’s to Samuel Say have been given ‘to Mr. Lister of Hackney.’ Toms did not apparently keep copies of them.
The sketch of the character of Mrs. Bridget Bendish [12.107 (56)] has several times been published, e.g. Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. 35, 1765, pp.357-8; the Annual Register, 1773, section ‘Characters’, pp.77-80. Vol. 35 of the Gentleman’s Magazine also has another piece by Say The Resurrection illustrated by the changes of the silk-worm, pp.423-4, and vol. 50, 1780, of the same has a brief
memoir of Samuel Say, p.568, and reprints, pp.568-571; 607-609, Say’s marginalia in a copy of A. Benson’s Prefactory discourse to his edition of Johnston’s Psalms, and the conclusion of that discourse, 1741.
Personal name