John Fanning Watson: looking ahead with a backwards glance

Abstract

John Fanning Watson (1779–1860) is best known as the author of the Annals of Philadelphia and for the antiquarian impulses that inspired them. Each generation has learned its own lessons from Watson's various dalliances in the past, often conflating him with the antiquated objects he valued. ☐ This thesis looks at two largely neglected Watson-related sources in the Winterthur collection, including a small box and its contents and a series of travel journals. It seeks to discover the extent to which Watson was emblematic of his own day and the extent to which he truly embodied the antiquarian at a time when the ‘remembering’ of the national past was becoming increasingly important. It concludes that Watson's efforts to preserve objects for the future and his enthusiastic response to technological advances show that he was looking ahead with fewer backwards glances than we might expect.