The Wide-Ranging Collector: George Arthur Plimpton     5

none other than the collector's second son. Dr. Calvin Hastings
Plimpton, the newly installed President of the collector's alma
mater.

In a sense the "collection" closest to his heart was his collection
of educational trusteeships. Foremost among these was that of
Amherst, from which he was graduated in 1876. He became a
Trustee of the College in 1890, and served as President of the
Board of Trustees from 1907 until 1936. Few, if any, of its mem¬
bers devoted as much time and energy to the affairs of the
College, and, a generous benefactoi himself, he was a notable ex¬
tractor of benefactions for the College ftom others.

He presented to the College an interesting theatrical collection,
but, more importantly, an extensive one relating to the French
and Indian Wars, and, in particular, to Lord Jeffrey Amherst,
who gave his name to the town and the college, was the captor
from the French of Louisburg, Ticonderoga and Montreal, and
who, as commander-in-chief of the British Armies in North
America, accepted the surrender of French Canada. The collec¬
tion comprises a wide variety of broadsides, contemporary maps,
engravings, original letters (many from Lord Amherst) and other
documents peitaining to the wars and to the earlier struggles of
the colonists against the French and the Indians.

The collection now covers the walls of the Lord Jeffrey Inn in
Amherst, where it provides an interesting opportunity to visitors
to that lovely town to study a little-known part of North Ameri¬
can histot)'. The collector was the author, incidentally, of the
chapter on Massachusetts' participation in the French and Indian
Wars in the Tercentennial History of Massachusetts, which was
published in 1930 under the editorship of Albert Bushnell Hart.

The next trusteeship in his collection was that of his school, the
Phillips Exeter Academy, from which he was graduated in 1873.
He was elected a Trustee in 1903, serving until December, 1935.
His gifts to the school included the Plimpton Playing Fields, the
Plimpton Playing Fields beyond (a matchless collection of some