The Massachusetts Register
The Massachusetts Register is the most used book in my library. Its corners are rounded with wear and it thumbs easily, like a deck of cards. Its binding has been partially re-stitched by hand, preserving what must have been the book’s most important section: the twelve pages of the almanac.
In his study of fifteenth-century devotional prints, the art historian Jan Van der Stock has noted that the more popular a print was, the less likely it was to be preserved. As he writes, “Most devotional prints…were simply cherished to destruction.” Almanacs may have been cherished, but they were also ubiquitous. The second book printed in Colonial North America was an almanac and the printers’ pace did not let up for nearly two hundred years. In 1792 there were more than 100 almanacs available for sale in the new United States. By 1826, fifty years after the Declaration of Independence, one almanac — the Old Farmer’s Almanac — has risen to prominence and printed 1.8 million copies, supplying nearly 20% of the total population.
That first almanac, published in 1639, was compiled by Captain William Pierce, a sailor who crossed the Atlantic several times and finally settled in Massachusetts in 1632. This pedigree was important; Pierce was described as not just an “editor” of the Almanac, but as its “calculator.” Astronomical observations and calculations were central to the almanac. The books predicted the movement of the sun, moon, and stars over periods of several years, which was crucial for travel, as well as for farming.
More than a century later, when Robert B. Thomas devised a plan for publishing his Old Farmer’s Almanac, which would go on to become the longest running almanac in the United States, the first thing he did was study mathematics. Other calculations in the almanac include distances between towns, with midway points marked in between, as well as the value of coin in different colonies, postage, and total manufactured goods.
The Massachusetts Register also includes planned court dates, names of local officials, including justices of the peace, judges, notaries public, Harvard’s vacation days, the cost of mailing a letter (less than 40 miles and more than 40 miles, but fewer than 90), the price to store a bag of coffee or a bushel of cotton, and how much it would cost to hire a tugboat pilot in the harbor. Even in 1825, the book listed every governor of the region since colonial days. It lists the name of the American president (James Monroe) and his salary ($25,000).
The origin of the word almanac may derive from the classical Arabic noun ‘anāḵa, which meant ‘to make (a camel) kneel,’ according to the Oxford English Dictionary. The editors write that “it functions as a noun of action (i.e. ‘halt at the end of a day’s travel’) and a noun of place (i.e. ‘stopping place’).”
The almanac offered information on all these things, the known and the possible. The first lines of the almanac list the phases of the moon, followed by charts that detail the days of the month, the times at which the sun and moon rise and set, the levels of the tide, as well as holidays, and weather predictions. The first week of August 1825 promised “More good hay weather for some days.” Later that month it was to be “Very fine for the season.” November, however, saw “Much dull weather may be expected,” interrupted only when it became “Pleasant for a day or two.” All of this still sounds just about right for New England in the late fall. Our experience of the weather may appear relative, wearing down the centuries like the blunted corners of the almanac. But, even this relative experience has changed; we are plagued by floods and wildfires, extreme heat and melting glaciers, interrupted migrations, both human and animal.
Until recently, the weather was what Americans talked about when they were avoiding conversation about politics or religion. Now, we may feel like November is dull or August is fine, but the timing of “good hay weather” is changing in ways that even the most sophisticated nineteenth-century almanac ‘calculator’ never could have foreseen. The familiarity of some aspects of the old almanac — the rising of the sun, the pull of the tides — now serve to highlight this catastrophic difference, which is decidedly not a natural cycle, though it could also be charted. Indeed, it has. We’re just not interested in reading the future like we once were.
