Rare February 22, 1800-Dated Washington's Birthday as a National day of Mourning and testimonial to his memory at Boscawen, New Hampshire, Funeral Discourse on the Death of General George Washington, Original Self-Wrappers, Printed by George Hough of Concord, Mass., .Choice Fine.
Imprint Titled: “A Discourse, Delivered at Boscawen, on Saturday the 22d of February, 1800, in Commemoration of the Late Death of General George Washington. By Samuel Wood, A.M. Pastor of the Church of Said Boscawen... Concord: Printed by George Hough, 1800”. Complete self-covered imprint, sewn as issued, no separate wrappers, period appropriate. This scarce New Hampshire imprint belongs to the extraordinary outpouring of published sermons, orations, and discourses that swept the young nation in the weeks following the death of George Washington at Mount Vernon on December 14, 1799.

When word reached Congress, that body formally recommended that Americans everywhere observe February 22, 1800 - Washington's birthday - as a national day of mourning and testimonial to his memory. Clergymen and civic orators from Maine to Georgia answered the call, delivering discourses from their own pulpits and meeting-houses that were, in an overwhelming number of instances, subsequently printed at the request of the assembled congregations and townspeople, precisely as this Boscawen discourse was. Several hundred such Washington memorial sermons are known to bibliographers today, making this genre one of the richest and most poignant categories of American mourning literature, but individual town-specific imprints such as this one, particularly from smaller New Hampshire parishes, survive in only a handful of recorded copies. The printed content is both extraordinary and moving.
Samuel Wood, A.M. (1752-1836) served for decades as the settled Congregational pastor of the church in Boscawen, New Hampshire, and was a respected figure in the religious and civic life of the Merrimack Valley. His discourse, delivered to his own congregation on the appointed day, stands as a first-hand period reaction to the national grief attending Washington's passing a heartfelt, local, and unmediated by later myth-making.

The imprint bears the mark of George Hough (1757-1830), the pioneering Concord, New Hampshire printer, newspaper editor (publisher of the Concord Herald), and postmaster, who operated one of the earliest and most important presses in the state capital during this formative period. Hough's imprints from the 1790s and 1800s are foundational to New Hampshire printing history and are keenly sought by collectors of early American regional imprints.

Washington memorial pamphlets of this kind are fragile surviv, - issued in modest local press runs, unbound, and intended for immediate reading rather than preservation and complete, untrimmed examples in original self-wrappers are seldom offered. A choice and desirable addition to any collection of American mourning literature, New Hampshire imprints, or Washingtoniana.