One of Morgan’s earliest notable purchases was both a landmark of American book history and an artifact of settler colonialism. The first complete Bible printed in the Western Hemisphere, the book was a project of the Reverend John Eliot (1604–1690), an English missionary of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. This translation aligned with Eliot’s efforts to convert Native peoples to Christianity and divorce them from their traditional ways of life.
Morgan purchased this copy for $1,000 at the 1879 auction of Connecticut banker George Brinley’s library. The New York Times called it “the crowning wonder of the sale.”
Mamusse Wunneetupanatamwe Up-Biblum God (The Holy Bible: Containing the Old Testament and the New)
Cambridge, MA: printed by Samuel Green and Marmaduke Johnson, 1663
The Morgan Library & Museum, purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan, 1879; PML 5441