CHARLES DEANE. 311 



surroundings in his boyhood may, therefore, account in part for the 

 direction given to the studies and arduous labors of his later years. 

 He was fitted for college; but for domestic reasons liis plan of life was 

 changed, and at the age of nineteen he came to Boston as a clerk. 

 He subsequently became a partner in the dry goods importing firm 

 of Messrs. "Waterston, Pray, & Co., and was the son-in-law of his 

 senior partner. Meanwhile he had begun to devote his leisure to the 

 past and the long past, and had become an active member of the 

 Massachusetts Historical and the American Antiquarian Societies. 

 In 18G4 he retired from business, while in the full tide of success, 

 with a fortune not so large as he saw the means of rapidly making it, 

 but amply sufficient for elegant, liberal, and generous living, and for 

 the easy accumulation of rare and costly books, which made his library 

 second in its kind to hardly any in this country. From that time his 

 sole occupation was the discovery and verification of records and facts 

 appertaining to American history, the editing of works that had passed 

 out of sight and almost out of knowledge, and the writing of portions 

 of history previously unwritten or miswritten. The only break in this 

 laborious life was a European tour in 1866, including a sojourn of 

 several weeks in London, where his reputation had preceded him, so 

 that he enjoyed large opportunities of intercourse with men of kindred 

 pursuits, and gathered no little material for future use. He retained 

 unimpaired vigor of body and mind and full working power till the 

 winter or spring of 1889. His last illness was one of slow decline, 

 with not infrequent suffering, and was borne with patience and serenity. 

 His life closed on the 13th of November of that year. 



For twenty-five years Mr. Deane was an officer, for a large portion 

 of that time a Vice-President, of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 

 and for nearly as long a time an efficient office-bearer in the American 

 Antiquarian Society. There are few volumes of the Proceedings of 

 either of these societies during that period that do not bear traces of 

 his collaboration. It would be hard to say, and to one not conversant 

 with the facts still harder to believe, how much of the most valuable 

 matter in those volumes would have been lost but for his keenness in 

 discovering, perseverance in procuring, and painstaking accuracy in 

 recording or editing, obscure yet often precious materials for history. 

 We cannot even commence the catalogue, which would fill many pages. 

 Perhaps his most important work is his edition of Governor Brad- 

 ford's "History of Plymouth Plantation." This work had long Iain 

 in manuscript in the library of the Bishop of London, and Mr. Deane 

 first of Americans ascertained where it was to be found. He pro- 



