---
name: 'Samuel Agnew'
type: person
born: 1820
died: 1880
url: https://confessional.org/authors/samuel-agnew
---

# Samuel Agnew

Samuel Agnew (1820–1880) was a Philadelphia publisher and bookseller, the son of James Agnew, and a founding figure of the Presbyterian Historical Society, with which he was closely associated from its organization in the early 1850s. Connected with the publishing firm Sorin & Ball, noted for issuing the popular Peter Parley books, he used his professional networks to build the Society’s early library and personally safeguarded its collections during years of financial uncertainty, later compiling the 1865 Catalogue of Books in the Library of the Presbyterian Historical Society. Long remembered in Presbyterian historical writing as the Society’s first and most devoted librarian and treasurer, Agnew’s perseverance was widely credited with preserving the institution through its formative decades until his death in 1880.