Monday July 28th Was about house as usual this
morning and have been mending some and fixing
some of Susans clothes Oakes & Oliver (3) are
having a book case put up in their room by
Ira Ford They have almost got books enough to
fill it Julia is to work for Mrs Witherell
making her a purple morning dress
A young carpenter named Ira Ford built a bookcase at the Ames house today in the bedroom of Oakes Angier and Oliver (3). The boys had acquired schoolbooks and other “books enough” and needed a place to store them all.
Like their mother and unlike their father, the Ames sons like to read. The middle son, Oliver (3), in particular, cherished reading. According to an unnamed eulogist in a memorial volume published in 1895, Oliver (3) built up quite a collection of books in his lifetime: “In the company of books he found an absorbing pleasure, and to the library which he had begun to collect in his early age he made in later years large additions of rare and valuable volumes.”* After Oliver (3)’s demise, those books that weren’t kept by his family were auctioned off at Sotheby’s.
*Anonymous, Oliver Ames Memorial, ca. 1895, p. 38
evelinaames 