AUTOGRAPH AND PORTRAIT ALBUM COMPILED BY HENRY BLODGET, A MEMBER OF YALE'S CLASS OF 1848 by [Yale Autograph Book] Blodget, Henry

[New Haven, CT. 6-1/4" x 8-1/4". [107] manuscript pages, fourteen engraved portraits of faculty and clergy and four views of Yale tipped in. Bound in original half calf [cloth boards detached and worn, lacking backstrip]. First gathering a bit loose but holding, one tipped-in portrait page loose. Title in ink manuscript on first page, "H. Blodget Class Album 1848"; edge lightly chipped. Light toning throughout, scattered foxing. Except as noted, Very Good.

This album was compiled by Henry Blodget (1825-1903), Yale Class of 1848, Yale Doctor of Divinity 1872. He spent 40 years as a missionary to China, was one of five missionaries who translated the New Testament into Mandarin, translated about two hundred hymns and other works into Chinese [including an Apology for Christianity for the Emperor of China in 1890].
Blodget carefully planned his album. The early pages were reserved for officers and faculty, often with engravings and inscriptions juxtaposed. President Theodore Woolsey offered an inscription in Greek. Some other faculty signers were chemist Benjamin Silliman, physicist Josiah W. Gibbs, president Jeremy Day, law professor David Daggett, Latin and Literature professor James L. Kingsley, didactic theologian Nathaniel W. Taylor, and the school's first professional librarian, Edward C. Herrick. He set aside leaves for each of his 89 classmates, generally in alphabetical order, securing signed inscriptions from many of them, some quite substantial, many including hometown and date of birth. Other inscriptions are also included by other Yale graduates from the classes of 1847 through 1851. Pinned to the last two leaves are alumni notices from 1888 and 1889.
A few of the classmates noted are Dwight Foster, lawyer, Massachusetts Attorney General and Associate Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court; Isaac S. Newton, lawyer and District Attorney of Chenango County, New York, for two terms; Austin Arnold, who died in 1840 soon after returning from the California Gold Rush; Theodore Winthrop, first Union officer to give his life in the Civil War; Edward P. Abbe, physician and President of the Southern Massachusetts Medical Society from 1880-1881; William Atchison, missionary in China; Samuel E. Baldwin, future Wisconsin lawyer; Henry T. Blake, studied at Yale Law School, lawyer in Bridgeport, Clerk of the Supreme and Superior Courts for Fairfield County; Isaac T. Rathbone, a tutor who died in June 1849 from cholera.