Delos M. Wood, Cooperstown bookseller

Today, in Cooperstown, New York, the 17th Annual Cooperstown Antiquarian Book Fair is underway.

Recently, I wrote about a Cooperstown bookseller's trade card on another blog, but had copied it from my original post on this blog from a few years back. Somewhere and somehow in the process of transferring that information, I deleted the original source from this blog. So I'll take this opportunity, on the day of the book fair in that beautiful little village, to repost the piece about the card.

I have a trade card for an old bookseller who had just purchased his partner's interest in a Cooperstown book shop, circa 1880s, and sent this card around to introduce the name change from Cockett & Wood to Delos M. Wood, Bookseller and Stationer.

I haven't found much of anything else to report on Mr. Wood or his business, but the card was too nice a specimen from a place I love to visit to not include it in this blog.

The book trade is still going strong there as well as that other game in town—baseball. Whether baseball was invented there or not, as one version has it, the game has been integral to this community for some seventy years with the Baseball Hall of Fame there. And I would suspect book shops have always played a role in the area’s culture.

I was last there about four years ago and found two shops in town and more in the surrounding area. I only had time to visit Willis Monie’s shop and I could have camped out there all day. Much to see. As with the Baseball Hall of Fame. As with the whole area.

The back of the Delos M. Wood's card

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