Allegheny College, founded in 1815 in Meadville, Pennsylvania, by Timothy Alden, within its first decade developed a library that was second only to that of Harvard among American colleges and was surpassed among nonteaching institutions only by the Library Company of Philadelphia and Jefferson's collection at the Library of Congress. President Alden acquired over 700 books from Rev. William Bentley of Salem, Mass. (1750-1819), 422 from Isaiah Thomas (1750-1831), famous printer and founder of the American Antiquarian Society, and over 3,100 volumes from Judge James Winthrop of Cambridge, Massachusetts. The latter's library was probably surpassed in size and quality, among New England private collections, only by the holdings of John Adams and John Quincy Adams. Because of the sources from which they came, these more than four thousand volumes constitute "the largest book relic of the culture of early New England now outside that region.