"My boy," he exclaimed. "Americana! That's the stuff to collect!" In 1885 Philadelphia bookseller Moses Polock emphatically expressed his fascination with early American history.  A generation later William L. Clements shared this sentiment and built his collection inspired by his great predecessors in the arena. Rarities from the remarkable holdings of the Clements Library such as John Eliot's A Brief Narrative of the Progress of the Gospel Amongst the Indians in New England and a manuscript diary of the 1763 Siege of Detroit make this exhibit a panoramic window on the early story of Americana appreciation, collecting and description. From White Kennett, the first great collector of Americana, to Hubert Howe Bancroft, who broke new ground in concentrating on the American West, this exhibit tells the stories of sixteen noteworthy specialists who created and nurtured the Americana field from the late seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries.