In 1870 he sold at Boston a collection of five thousand volumes, catalogued as _Bibliotheca Historica_[102] (2,545 entries), being mostly Americana, from the library of the elder Henry Stevens of Vermont. It has a characteristic introduction, with an array of readable notes.[103] His catalogues have often such annotations, inserted on a principle which he explains in the introduction to this one: “In the course of many years of bibliographical study and research, having picked up various isolated grains of knowledge respecting the early history, geography, and bibliography of this western hemisphere, the writer has thought it well to pigeon-hole the facts in notes long and short.” In October, 1870, he printed at London a _Schedule of Two Thousand American Historical Nuggets taken from the Stevens Diggings in September, 1870, and set down in Chronological Order of Printing from 1490 to 1800 [1776], described and recommended as a Supplement to my printed Bibliotheca Americana_. It included 1,350 titles. In 1872 he sold another collection, largely Americana, according to a catalogue entitled _Bibliotheca Geographica & Historica; or, a Catalogue of [3,109 lots], illustrative of historical geography and geographical history. Collected, used, and described, with an Introductory Essay on Catalogues, and how to make them upon the Stevens system of photo-bibliography_. The title calls it a first part; but no second part ever appeared. Ten copies were issued, with about four hundred photographic copies of titles inserted. Some copies are found without the essay.[104] The next year (1873) he issued a privately printed list of two thousand titles of American “Continuations,” as they are called by librarians, or serial publications in progress as taken at the British Museum, quaintly terming the list _American books with tails to ’em_.[105] Finally, in 1881, he printed Part I. of _Stevens’s Historical Collections_, a sale catalogue showing 1,625 titles of books, chiefly Americana, and including his Franklin Collection of manuscripts, which he later privately sold to the United States Government, an agent of the Boston Public Library yielding to the nation.[106] One of the earliest to establish an antiquarian bookshop in the United States was the late Samuel G. Drake, who opened one in Boston in 1830.[107] His special field was that of the North American Indians; and the history and antiquities of the aborigines, together with the history of the English Colonies, give a character to his numerous catalogues.[108] Mr. Drake died in 1875, from a cold taken at a sale of the library of Daniel Webster; and his final collections of books were scattered in two sales in the following year.[109]