ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The obligations incurred in the preparation of the following study are much too numerous and varied to admit of adequate notice. Special mention must, however, be made of my indebtedness to the staffs of the following libraries: The Boston Athenaeum, Congregational, Masonic (Boston), American Antiquarian Society, Connecticut Historical Society, New York Historical Society, Library of Congress, the public libraries of the cities of Boston and New York, the library of Hiram College, and the university libraries of Harvard, Yale, and Columbia. In addition to the many courtesies received from these sources, I have had valuable assistance from the following persons: Mr. Newton R. Parvin, grand secretary of the Grand Lodge of Iowa, A. F. & A. M., Cedar Rapids, Iowa, whose warm personal interest in my investigation has found expression in the loan of many valuable volumes; Mr. Worthington C. Ford, of the Massachusetts Historical Society, who besides opening freely to me the unpublished treasures of the Society, has given me the benefit of peculiarly stimulating suggestions; Mr. Walter C. Green, librarian of Meadville Theological School, who has most generously met all my drafts upon his patience and time; and Professor Guy Stanton Ford, of the University of Minnesota, who has made it possible for me to use his copy of Forestier's Les Illuminés de Bavière et la Franc-Maçonnerie allemande, without which in this war period, with its partial stoppage of the inflow of European literature, my chapter on "The European Order of the Illuminati" could scarcely have been written.
