NEW YORK: COLLINS, KEESE, AND COMPANY.

PHILADELPHIA: THOMAS, COWPERTHWAIT, AND COMPANY.

CINCINNATI: JOSIAH DRAKE.

RALEIGH, N. C.: TURNER and Hughes.

LONDON: WILEY AND PUTNAM.

Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1839, by

DAVID H. WILLIAMS,

in the Clerk's office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

CAMBRIDGE:

FOLSOM, WELLS, AND THURSTON,
Printers to the University.

PREFACE.

THE Volume of the American Almanac for 1839 was the last of the First Series of 10 volumes; and there was inserted at the end of it a General Index for the whole Series. The volume now offered to the public, the 11th in number from the commencement of the publication, may be regarded as the 1st volume of the Second Series of 10 volumes, in the last of which a General Index

may be expected for this Series. Should the public patronage be such as to cause the work to be continued for many years to come, it may be found a convenient arrangement to have every ten volumes for ten successive years, form a distinct Series, and be connected together by a General Index.

We cherish a hope, that the American Almanac will continue to be published, when all who have hitherto been concerned in its preparation shall have rested from their labors; that, whatever changes may take place with respect to the conductors of the work, it may continue to increase in usefulness, and that the volumes will be thought worthy of preservation, as an authentic record of contemporary history and statistics.

Some of the principal things recorded, and subjects treated of, in the present volume, in addition to such matters as are common to all or most of the volumes, are a List of American Writers, The Northeastern Boundary, Debts and Stocks of the several States, Steam-Engines and Steamboat Navigation, American and Belgian Railroads, and Notices of State Prisons, or Penitentiaries, and Asylums for the Insane, in the different States.

It has repeatedly happened, heretofore, that we have not been able to find room for all the matter that was prepared for insertion. The same thing has occurred with respect to the present volume. We have had less space than we could wish for such information