Excerpt from A Memoir of William Kelby: Librarian of the New York Historical Society

While foreign in birth, William Kelby was thor oughly American in training. His parents emi grated to this country, arriving in New York in June, 1842. Their son William was then in his second year. They first settled at Hyde Park, Dutchess County, in this State. Thence they re moved to Saratoga Springs, and later crossed the frontier to Canada West. Returning to New York City in July, 1847, they made their permanent home here. Here the father entered into the em ployment of this Society. And here the son got the beginnings of knowledge in the public schools of the City; the beginnings only, for in fact his ac quirements were the result of his own self-directed labors. For he was but sixteen years of age when he was withdrawn from school and entered into the service of this Society, in which his father was then engaged. This was on the 7th of July, 1857, since when, until his death on the 27th of july of the present year, 1898, William Kelby was uninter ruptedly engaged in the various services of this institution, and in the arrangement and care of its many treasures. In any measure of the value of these services and of the knowledge required for their proper performance, it must be remembered that the New York Historical Society is not a lit erary institution only, but a veritable museum of antiquity and an extensive gallery of art. The material care of these departments developed his technical knowledge; and their arrangement, cata logue, and display were the occasion for a constant research over a wide field. The great Abbott col lection of Egyptian antiquities, with its sacred bulls, its rich sarcophagi, its scarab ornaments, and its thousand other relics of the days of the Pharaohs, may be instanced as one of the subjects to which he gave years of study and care. The Mexican and American Indian collections are equally curious, and to us as valuable The gallery of paintings, particularly rich in its showing of Dutch art, gave opportunity for the acquisition of information and the development of taste in a different, though in part cognate, direction, as historical portraiture is a special feature of this priceless collection, while the paintings in the Bryan department afford study of art in general from its renaissance in Europe. With the help of Dunlap's History of the Fine Arts in America, Mr. Kelby had acquainted him self with the history of painting and he was famil iar with the best examples of our art, from Pratt and Stuart, from Smybert and Malbone, to Baker and Huntington, many of which adorn the walls of this institution, and make known to us, not only the features and costumes of the worthies of old, but the progress of art in this western world.

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