Acquisitions Afternoon:
Collecting Congregationalism and the Founding 56 Adopt-a-Book Program

The Congregational Library & Archives’ collection started with eight donors who contributed items from their personal collections that they saw as shaping an understanding and interpreting the Congregational story. 170 years later, the CLA’s collection numbers over 225,000 print and manuscript works, many of which were donated from private collectors.

In this program, Rev. Dr. Davida Foy Crabtree shared her journey as a book collector and her decision to contribute her collection of Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell’s works and her own personal papers to the Congregational Library & Archives.

This program was part of our 2024 Adopt-a-Book Program.

SPEAKER BIO

Rev. Dr. Davida Foy Crabtree has served for over fifty years in the ministries of the United Church of Christ. Raised in a tiny rural church in northwest Connecticut, she went to Andover Newton and on to parish and non-parish ministries, including 23 years in Conference Ministry. Her family taught her to learn from the past, so in her early years when she encountered those who thought women shouldn’t be ordained, she began to collect the works of Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell and other women of the suffrage era. That collection and her own archives are now held by the Congregational Library & Archives.