JOHNS HOPKINS.


GILMAN, DANIEL COIT. 1831-1908. Autograph Letter Signed ("Daniel C. Gilman") to John Arnold Rockwell raising money for Yale to purchase a bust of Professor Benjamin Silliman, 1 p, bifolium, 12mo, Yale College, [New Haven,] July 19, 1860, written on the first page of a printed fundraising leaflet, creases, toning.WITH: Photograph Signed ("Daniel C. Gilman"), an albumen print oval portrait, 150 x 119 mm at the center, mounted on board and signed beneath, matting residue along the left-hand margin of mount, mounted photograph signed "S.N. Johnson" to the verso.Gilman, the founding president of Johns Hopkins University, at the time was the Director of the Yale Library, which was attempting to raise $700 for a bust of Silliman by C.B. Ives, to be placed next to busts of Professors Day and Taylor (also by Ives). Rockwell, a former U.S. Congressman, graduated Yale, Class of 1822. During this time at Yale, Gilman was "propagandizer, lobbyist, money raiser for the Yale Scientific School, [and] reforming librarian of Yale College" (Hawkins, Pioneer: A History of the Johns Hopkins University, Ithaca, 1960, p 16. The Osler biographer Michael Bliss calls him "the far-sighted founding president of Johns Hopkins University." Accompanied by an engraved portrait of Silliman (1851).