Within just a few years of its founding in 1804, the New-York Historical Society began publication of a series of books titled Collections of the New-York Historical Society. There were at least two purposes to this: the dissemination of the content of important historical source materials and the preservation of this content in the event of the loss of the original documents. Five volumes of what came to be known as the First Series of the Collections appeared between 1811 and 1830. After a decade, publication of the Collections began again in 1841, restarting with Volume I of a Second Series. Four volumes of this Second Series were published, with the last appearing in 1859.

Yet, as noted in a retrospective review conducted in 1882 by a Committee on Publications for the N-YHS Executive Committee, the costs of producing the First and Second Series of the Collections commonly resulted in financial hardship and risks to N-YHS and to publication subscribers. Accordingly, a new funding plan for the Collections had been sought. On April 13, 1858, Librarian George H. Moore proposed to the N-YHS Executive Committee that a Publication Fund be established to provide for the regular publication of the Collections. A special committee consisting of Moore, George Folsom and Erastus C. Benedict was formed to consider the proposal. The three reported back to the Executive Committee on May 18, 1858 with a specific plan that was endorsed by the Committee, and the proposed Publication Fund was then approved by the Society at its meeting of the same date. Immediately thereafter, on June 1, 1858, a circular was distributed soliciting subscriptions to the Fund.

As described in the circular, the Publication Fund would issue 1,000 shares at $25 per share. The monies would be invested, with the income used to publish N-YHS's transactions and Collections in American History. Holders of the shares were entitled to a copy of each and every volume issued by the Fund, which had the objective of publishing one volume annually. The number of each annual volume to be printed was to be capped at 1,250; 1,000 of these were for distribution to the shareholders and the remainder were for the N-YHS library and for exchange with other institutions. Recognizing that it would take time to sell all the shares and build enough principal and income to start publishing, the Fund proposed to pay a dividend of 5% on their principal to shareholders until publications commenced.

The Fund did not get off to a strong start. By early 1860, when sales largely ceased, only about 100 of the 1,000 shares had been sold. In 1864, with publications not yet started, the Fund made its first cash dividend payment to the shareholders. This was followed by a renewed sales effort in April 1865, which proved to be more successful. By 1866, about 750 of the 1,000 shares had been sold. Sales again largely plateaued at this point but, though short of the capital target, the decision was made to initiate publishing. In 1868, the second and last cash dividend was paid to shareholders, as Volume I of the Publication Fund Series of the Collections was also issued that year.

Sales of the shares continued after 1866, but never reached the 1,000 available. By 1900, about 811 shares had been sold. The last sale of an original share—number 850—occurred in 1930. Most of the shares were bought by individuals, with James Lenox purchasing the first ten certificates in 1858. Libraries and other institutions also purchased shares. Further, the shares could be sold, bequeathed, or otherwise transferred. New certificates numbered from 1,001 were issued to the transferees; the final certificate number issued was 1,558 in 1979. Many of the original and transferred certificates were handed down to other individuals, though many were also donated or bequeathed to institutions. For example, historian George Bancroft's share (#15) was given to the New York Public Library, as were several owned by James Lenox.

But many purchased certificates eventually went unused. When volumes were published, notice was sent to the shareholders of record that they could claim the volume at N-YHS or provide a stated amount of postage for the book to be shipped. As the decades passed, many volumes went unclaimed, piling up in the thousands in storage at N-YHS. These included volumes reserved for the unsold shares, as new purchasers were given the right to acquire not just future volumes, but all earlier ones as well. By the 1920s, steps were taken to both trim the print run to a realistic number below 1,250 and to drop about 300 names from the rolls based on the extended lack of communication and claims from them.

Starting from its earliest, undercapitalized days, the Publication Fund struggled financially to maintain the pace of one volume per year. By 1882, when the Executive Committee reviewed the publication program, the pace was about four years behind. The volume issued in 1907 was for the year 1899, eight years behind. Some attempt was made to address the financial problem by raising the share price to $50 in June 1866 and to $100 in 1883, and at least two special donations totalling $1500 were made in 1907 to defray the costs of producing particular back volumes. But by the close of 1907 the Fund amounted to only $25,450, all of it paid-in capital, and N-YHS's Annual Report noted the inadequacy of this amount for generating enough income to publish all the back volumes. It was at this point, in 1908, that the Fund received a major financial boost with a bequest of almost $24,000 from John Watts DePeyster. To satisfy the condition of the bequest, the Publication Fund was renamed the John Watts DePeyster Publication Fund. The price of the shares was also increased in 1908 to $200.

DePeyster's bequest seems to have made a critical difference in the Fund's ability to publish the Collections, at least for a time. By about 1916, the Fund had caught up on its back volumes and remained roughly on pace into the 1930s. Even faced with the limits imposed by World War II, the Fund was behind by only a couple of years in the mid-1940s. Yet, costs were moving beyond what the Fund could support. In 1954, the Fund published the volume for 1948. In that same year, N-YHS Director R.W.G. Vail noted that the Fund would need to be more than doubled to cover the cost of printing an annual volume. Indeed, the next volume, for 1949, was not published until 1965. The final three volumes (Vols. 83-85 for 1950-1952) were published by the Fund in the 1970s, the last in 1975. In the 1990s, as part of the overall financial reorganization that took place then at N-YHS, the role of the DePeyster Publication Fund as the source of funding for the series of Collections, and the series itself, ended. The remnant of the Fund remains as a source for select initiatives, such as its co-sponsorship in 1998 of Helena Zinkham's A Guide to Print, Photograph, Architecture & Ephemera Collections.

(Principal sources for this note, other than the Publication Fund records themselves, include R.W.G. Vail's Knickerbocker Birthday, Executive Committee minute books and papers found in the New-York Historical Society management committee records (NYHS-RG 1), and the N-YHS Annual Reports, especially those for 1907 and 1908. Vail's book includes a comprehensive list of the contents of all volumes of all three series of the Collections, through 1954, on pages 491-501.)