Excerpt from Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, 1904

Ladies and gentlemen - I am glad to be able to welcome so large a number of you to the Twelfth Annual Meeting Of the Society. It is especially fitting that this meeting should be held on the premises Of the Shearith Israel Congregation of New York, the oldest Jewish congregation in North Amer ica. It is not my purpose to make an address to you, and indeed none such is provided for in the programme. The large number of interesting titles set down there make it necessary that all of our time should be devoted to the hearing and to the discussion of the papers announced, and I do not propose to infringe upon the regular order of the meeting.

I cannot avoid referring to the occurrence which occasioned the postponement of our meeting, which, as you all know, had been by the kind invitation of our Baltimore members set in that city on February 11th and 12th. The great disaster which overtook Baltimore on Sunday, February 7th, in the form of a fire, almost unparalleled in its dimensions in modern times, rendered it impossible to hold the meeting there at that time, and as soon as the necessary arrangements could be made, this city and this date were fixed upon. I am sure that you will all join me, and indeed the whole civilized world, in expressmg to our friends in Baltimore our sincere sympathy in their loss and our admiration at the remarkable calmness and energy which they have exhibited in the presence of this great calamity.

The Society had another loss this year of very considerable severity, which was occasioned by an earlier fire in the city of Baltimore. The printing establishment at which our pubciety suffered a serious fire which resulted in the destruction of all Of the stock of the publications of the Society as well as the entire edition of Number 11, which would otherwise have been in your hands long before this. The material loss to the Society was considerable, since the stock of publications was insured to about half its estimated value, and it is not likely that the Society will see its way clear to the reprinting of these volumes. Under the circumstances, any copy of the past publi cations of the Society, which any institution or member can spare, will be most useful as a reserve stock and will be grate fully received. Fortunately an almost complete duplicate of the proofs of Volume Eleven was in existence and where there was none such, authors have been able to furnish a second copy Of their articles, so that Number Eleven is being issued as originally designed.

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