J.N. Larned’s influence endures in Buffalo today.  Under his leadership, the library more than doubled the size of its collection, was an early adopter of the Dewey Decimal System and opened its doors to the youngest readers with one of the nation’s first children’s reading rooms.  And it was Larned’s friendship with Clemens that led, in part, to the donation of his handwritten manuscript of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to the Buffalo Library. 

Josephus’ father was a carpenter who moved from place to place and was working in Canada when Josephus was born in 1836.  The family moved to Buffalo’s lower West Side when he was 12 years old.  He was educated in Buffalo public schools, but quit when he was 16 years old after his mother died at age 40.

After leaving school, Josephus worked at a number of jobs.  He first went to work as a bookkeeper at the ship chandler Munger & Williard at 10 Main Street, and boarded with S.Z. Haven, a homeopathic physician and surgeon at 20 West Eagle Street.  After a year at Munger & Williard, he clerked for two years at the transportation house of P.L. Sternberg.  Next, he went to work as a clerk at the Western Transportation Company.

In the Spring of 1857, seeking to improve his fortune, he traveled West to Iowa but returned to Buffalo after eight months. Shortly after his return to Buffalo he went to work on the staff of the Buffalo Daily Republic, where publisher Guy H. Salisbury, 25 years his senior, became his mentor.  He worked at the Republic until the Spring of 1859 when he became associate editor of the Buffalo Express.

In August 1869, Samuel Clemens, better known by his pen name Mark Twain, became a partner and co-editor with Larned at the Buffalo Express newspaper. Josephus had been at the Express for 10 years when Twain arrived and had written political editorials supporting Abraham Lincoln throughout the Civil War. Larned’s command of the English language was a striking feature of his articles, which were known to be thoughtful, logical and forceful. After the war ended, Josephus invested in the paper.

Twain also invested in the paper, paying Thomas Aiguier Kennett $25,000 for a one-third interest. He borrowed the money for the investment from his future father-in-law, Jervis Langdon, a wealthy Elmira coal merchant with operations in Buffalo. Larned and Twain’s other partner in the Express was Col. George Holden Selkirk, business manager of the paper. After a little more than a week on the job, Twain wrote to his fiancé about Larned: “That fellow works straight along all day, day in and day out, like an honest old treadmill horse. I tell him I wish I had his industry and he had my sense.” Twain described his partner as “the literal-minded political editor,” adding, "I shall not often meddle with politics because we have a political editor who is already excellent and who only needs a term in the penitentiary to be perfect."

Larned and Twain became close friends as they worked together at the offices of the Express, 14 East Swan Street (now the site of the Ellicott Square Building). They socialized outside of the office setting, meeting to play cards and share stories. Josephus sponsored Twain for membership in the Nameless Club, a group of Buffalonians who shared a love of literature, and the Young Men’s Association. At the Nameless Club, members would regularly meet and sing a club song, debate and read poetry and occasionally drink Catawba wine and punch. Other prominent members of the club included William Pryor Letchworth, David Gray and William Clement Bryant. Larned was also a guest at Twain’s  marriage to Olivia Langdon on February 2, 1870, at the Langdon home in Elmira.

By April 1871, Twain had sold his interest in the Express to Selkirk at a $10,000 loss and left Buffalo, ending his career in journalism. The following year, Larned sold his interest and left the Express to become superintendent of the Buffalo Schools.  The two men remained lifelong friends. In a letter dated November 1, 1900, Twain wrote to his friend: “I have not forgotten you. I have held you in remembrance and affection all these years, Sincerely S. L. Clemens.”

In the spring of 1877, Larned was appointed the first superintendent of the Young Men’s Association, a membership library that he eventually developed into what is now the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library. He served in that capacity for 20 years. As superintendent, he went to work, visiting other major libraries to study how they were organized.  While in Boston, he met Melville Dewey, a pioneer in librarianship.  Dewey showed him his new classification system for libraries, the Dewey Decimal System, which he had copyrighted in 1876.

Once back in Buffalo, Josephus spent the next year converting his library’s 30,000-book collection to the new Dewey system.  It was the first complete application of the system in a general city library in the United States.  His efforts attracted the attention of members of the American Library Association (ALA) and he was invited to present a detailed report of the successful conversion at the association’s 1878 meeting. Larned then became active in the ALA and continued to endorse the Dewey system.

Josephus introduced other changes at the library as well, including home delivery, addition of foreign periodicals and publishing a new books list in the local newspapers.  He also implemented the idea of displaying new books on open shelves to boost reading. In 1880, he put up a “query-hook” in the library to allow patrons to ask him questions and kept an index of his responses, later using them as the basis for his 1893, five-volume History for Ready Reference.  Between 1894 and 1913, the book went through 31 editions.  Selected volumes have been reprinted as recently as 2018. Project Gutenberg has released volumes 1-3 online, the latest in 2022.

Larned made a speech titled “The Influence of a Public Library” at a meeting held April 18, 1883, to support the movement that resulted in the erecting of the Buffalo Library Building. The following year, the Young Men’s Association approved funding for a new joint project with the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, the Buffalo Historical Society and the Society of Natural History to construct a new building for their combined use. 

He then turned his attention to library architecture, visiting several large library buildings throughout the East and consulting with their architects. When he returned to Buffalo, he drew his own plans for the structure.  Larned was a member of the building committee which chose architect Cyrus L.W. Eidlitz over renowned Victorian architect H.H. Richardson and nine other prominent architects for the project. In 1886, the Young Men’s Association changed its name to The Buffalo Library to avoid confusion with the YMCA. The new building at Lafayette Square was dedicated in February 1887.

Larned was a leader in promoting reading opportunities for children. In 1881, he prepared and issued a “Catalogue of Books for Young Readers,” and one of the nation’s first children’s reading rooms was opened at the Buffalo Library in 1896.  He provided the children’s room with small chairs, books, puzzle maps and story tellers, and created free reading tickets for distribution to students in the Buffalo Schools. Additionally, the library was opened on Sunday to give working people the opportunity to visit, and he operated training classes to prepare young men and women to work in the library.

Josephus served as president of the American Library Association from 1893 to 1894, presiding over its Lake Placid Conference in the latter year.  He was described by Samuel Swett Green, one of the ALA founders, as “one of the most sober-minded, thoughtful and weighty writers, and most active and sensible workers in the Library Association.” Considered an expert on library architecture by his colleagues at the ALA, he gave a lecture describing all of the new library buildings recently completed, planned and in progress at an 1897 conference.

In 1897, the board of trustees of the Buffalo Library entered into a contract with the City of Buffalo and opened its doors to everyone, free of charge.  In his 20 years of service to the library, Larned increased the inventory of books from 30,000 to over 84,000. He gave a scholastic flair to the institution, but when offered the superintendency of the new Buffalo Public Library, he declined.

What was arguably one of Larned’s most significant contributions to Buffalo’s library, however, grew out of his friendship with Mark Twain. In November 1885, library curator James Fraser Gluck wrote to Twain, in part: “I can assure you sir, that it would be highly appreciated in this city where you have many readers, if it should seem to you proper to send to the superintendent of the Library Mr. J.N. Larned, or to myself, such manuscripts as you might wish to present to the Library.  They will be accorded a place of honor and preserved in perpetuo.” Twain responded, sending the second half of his handwritten manuscript of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn along with a letter of apology:  "I have hunted the house over, and that is all I can find," believing that the first half had been destroyed by the printer.  

One hundred years later, the missing pages of the manuscript were found in a steamer trunk that once belonged to Gluck.  It was determined that, in 1887, Twain had found the first half of the manuscript and had it delivered to his former partner and friend, Josephus Larned, superintendent of the library.  Larned, in turn, thanked Twain and apparently turned the manuscript over to Gluck with instructions to have it bound. Unfortunately, Gluck died unexpectedly before the binding and the manuscript remained in the hands of the Gluck family until it was discovered in the trunk in the attic of his granddaughter in Hollywood, CA, in October 1990. The full manuscript is now on display in the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library.

Larned retired from the library and took his family on an ocean voyage to England where they stayed for five months. He was made an honorary member of the Saturn Club, which required the unanimous signatures of nearly 200 members. During the last 20 years of his life, he took every opportunity to point out the uselessness and barbarity of war.  He was convinced that if all wars, including the Revolutionary War, were taught in schools with a tone of abhorrence, and where the causes were subject to scholarly examination and cool logic, an ethics and morality would be produced in the minds of students that would make future wars unthinkable.

After retiring from the library, Josephus wrote an additional dozen books on various subjects, including the importance of books, the History of England, History of the United States, History of Buffalo, the rules of life and a biography of William Pryor Letchworth, philanthropist and founder of Letchworth State Park. He was also a frequent lecturer at many public events in Buffalo.  Several of those addresses have been reprinted in pamphlet form and seven of his articles were published in Atlantic Monthly magazine.

Though a prolific writer, there is no evidence that Larned ever wrote about himself.  Little is known about his parents, Henry Sherwood Larned and Mary Ann Nelson, nor of his youth. He was born on May 11, 1836, in Chatham, Ontario, and had one brother, Henry Sylvanus Larned, also born in Canada in 1842. Both of his parents were U.S. citizens, making him a U.S. citizen. Through his paternal grandmother, Cynthia Holmes, his ancestry can be traced back seven generations to Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island.

A front page article in the Buffalo Evening News announcing his death read, “for more than half a century a distinguished citizen of Buffalo, ever foremost in the advocacy of progressive ideas for its advancement and betterment.” He is buried in a family plot in Forest Lawn Cemetery.