About Us
The Remnant Trust collection began more than three decades ago by Founder Brian Bex. Deeply passionate about individual liberty and human dignity, he identified the 100 most important works speaking to these topics, gaining input from scholars.
The Remnant Trust
The Remnant Trust is a public educational foundation that shares an actively growing  collection of manuscripts, first edition and early works dealing with the topics of individual liberty and human dignity with some pieces dating as early as 2500 B.C.  The Remnant Trust makes this collection available to colleges, universities and other organizations for use by students, faculty, scholars and the general public. Those exposed are encouraged to touch, feel and read the originals, including first English translations.
Our Mission
The mission of The Remnant Trust is to elevate educational standards & the public’s understanding of individual liberty & human dignity through the precedent setting, hands on availability of the world’s great ideas in original form…
To raise consciousness of the most significant documents that have shaped America: The Great Experiment…
To raise the spirits of each generation to think the grandest thoughts & be guided by the most profound idealism, implementing Emerson’s thesis on Man Thinking…
To provide, through sharing, those works moving Goethe’s vision into reality: to think is easy, to act is hard, but the hardest thing in the world is to act in accordance with one’s thinking…
To be the world’s finest repository of the great ideas that have propelled Man through the centuries from the earth to the stars…
To be free, to think, speak & act in keeping with the greatest of enduring assets: Reason, with justice for all…
Great ideas belong to everyone.
Our History
A Distinguished Collection
The Remnant Trust collection began more than three decades ago by Founder Brian Bex. Deeply passionate about individual liberty and human dignity, he identified the 100 most important works speaking to these topics, gaining input from scholars. The Trust has since been dedicated to our mission to elevate educational standards and the public’s understanding of individual liberty and human dignity through the precedent-setting, hands-on availability of the world’s great ideas in original form—and raising the consciousness of the most significant documents that have shaped America: The Great Experiment. Today, The Remnant Trust’s Wisdom of the Ages Athenaeum is a preeminent privately-funded collection of over 1,600 original and early version texts about individual liberty and human dignity.
Founded in 1997, it began with a conversation about education and getting people to think. As the Founder understood, “The only thing that excites professors are old books”. It was decided the Collection should focus on the ideas of liberty and dignity in the time period prior to the 20th century.
The Remnant Trust, curator of the Wisdom of the Ages Athenaeum collection, is overseen by its Board, drawn from all walks of life and different backgrounds. It shares a common interest and understanding for the need to have all sides to be represented in The Collection so individuals can form their own opinions and ideas. No one person owns the Collection. The Trust owns and preserves it. The Trust operates on grants, private and public contributions, and funds raised through events.
Our Purpose
The Remnant Trust makes available to the general public, a world class collection of manuscripts, 1st and early edition works, for use in original form. Placing such “great and rare documents” in the hands of faculty and students may well lead to an improvement of their minds and spirits—directly and deliberately stimulated with the ideas inside those works and in accordance with the higher laws of life acknowledged by an engaged populous. The Remnant Trust provides for use of these works—The Wisdom of the Ages Athenaeum—to put forth a body of ideas, moral habits and beliefs, conventions and customs of the past to bridge time itself. This invites students, faculty, business, professional, civic organizations and the public alike to join in intellectual conversations.
Collections of this magnitude and quality are found deep in the archives of prestigious institutions, under lock and key and accessible only to a privileged few. By contrast The Remnant Trust’s vision has always been to provide the opportunity for people to hold, examine, read and discuss the pieces of the collection.
Grounded in Core Values
Open dialogue ensures the relevancy of the ideas supporting a political economy that most effectively protects individual liberty and human dignity. These powerful notions led to a declaration of freedom and underpin a constitutional republic with limited government, federalism, separation of powers, the dignity of the individual, and individual liberty. The Trust is committed to economic freedom, recognizing that private property rights under the rule of law provide for open and free markets that allow for private enterprise, entrepreneurship, voluntary exchange, and the dignity and flourishing of the individual. The Trust is committed to fostering learning and conversation to carry forward our Founders’ vision. For over 25 years, The Remnant Trust has raised the consciousness of the most critical documents and ideas that have shaped this great experiment in freedom in America.
Moreover, The Remnant Trust board and staff are committed to good stewardship of the collection and funds entrusted to us.