Manuscripts of Early National and Antebellum America

1 vol., 11 x 20 cm., 47 leaves, with 88 pages of manuscript. A manuscript tunebook containing 44 songs in fa-so-la notation. Possibly of Pennsylvania origin, it appears to date from the mid to late 1790s. Most of the lyrics derive from the poetry of Isaac Watts. MSN/EA 9307-01. [Finding Aid]

1 vol., 20 cm., 47 leaves, with 55 pages of manuscript in the author's hand. The Englishman William Cobbett (1763-1835) was an enormously prolific author, political journalist, and pamphleteer, whose Year's Residence was the upshot of his occupancy, during 1817-19, of a Long Island farm. The book was published in New York in 1818, and in London in 1819. The manuscript contains alphabetically organized index entries, in Cobbett's hand. Some of these entries appear in the London edition of the book, though only Part I (of three) is indexed in the copy consulted. MSN/EA 9303-1-B.

1 volume, 20 cm., 16 leaves, with 22 pages of manuscript; 1 manuscript fascicle (16 cm., 11 leaves) and three printed clippings laid in. A book of medical remedies and cooking recipes (both termed "receipts") prepared by the physician Howell Rogers (1774-1851) of Colchester, Connecticut for his sister, Mary Rogers Chapman, of Norwich. The book is neatly accomplished in double column format, with hand-decorated wrappers: the "medical" and "cookery" sections are arranged dos a dos, with separate title pages. One of the enclosures is a sewn pamphlet of additional medical remedies, written in an unidentified hand. Rogers was the author of On Essences and their use and, on the method of preparing and taking a variety of tinctures and syrups (1814). MSN/EA 9305-1 to MSN/EA 9305-3.

1 vol., 25 cm., 12 leaves, with 13 pages of manuscript, mostly in the hand of Jesse Weber Griffiths. A brief essay by the noted Philadelphia physician Elijah Griffiths (1769-1847). The manuscript is in the hand of the doctor's brother, J. W. Griffiths, with a few penciled emendations in a second hand. The author affirms the notion that remittent fevers are provoked by "exhalations from stagnant water and marshy ground." MSN/EA 9302-1.

2 items. Two manuscripts in the hand of Washington Irving (1783-1859). The first is a single leaf of what may have been a holograph manuscript of the second, abridged edition of Irving's The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, published in New York and London in 1829-30. The second is a 3-page autograph letter signed directed to publisher George P. Putnam, dated 27 December 1852. MSN/EA 9306-1 to MSN/EA 9306-2.

1 vol. A bound volume of scriptural commentary in the hand of the Catholic missionary priest Louis DeSeille (d. 1838). In the 1830s DeSeille worked from a mission station in northern Indiana, at the future location of the University of Notre Dame. MSN/EA 9304-1-B.

1 vol., 18 cm., 81 leaves, with 160 pages of manuscript in the author's hand. The first 132 pages of the manuscript consists of a narrative entitled "The Recolections of a Boatmen," recounting a six-month river journey from Augusta, Kentucky to New Orleans and back made by the author in 1838-39. The purpose of the trip was to trade along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, wherever the opportunity presented itself. The author's craft was the "store boat" Augusta (named for what was very likely his and his associates' native place, 45 miles above Cincinnati on the Ohio). A second, shorter memoir (pp 133-160) describes a trip east, to Pittsburgh and Philadelphia and ultimately to Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where the author attended college. The writing is literate, and combines physical observation of the author's changing environs with a penchant for anecdote. MSN/EA 9300-1-B.

1 document. This manuscript is a copy of a purported land deed dated May 1, 1767 between Jonathan Carver (1710-1780), an American explorer, and two Dakota Indian chiefs. It supposedly granted Carver and his heirs a tract of land in present-day Wisconsin and Minnesota that encompassed territory from St. Paul, Minnesota to Iron and Wood Counties in central Wisconsin (about 10,000 square miles). The original deed, however, never surfaced. The first reference to the supposed document appeared after Carver’s death in the editor’s introduction of the third edition of Carver’s Travels through the Interior Parts of North America, in the Years 1766, 1767 and 1768 (1781). Although the editor claimed to have the deed in his possession and provided a transcription, he later expressed doubt that the document ever existed (Quaife, 1920, 13). Beginning in 1804 Carver’s heirs and other agents attempted to claim the land in a series of machinations that one historian characterized as a “maze of fraud,” which continued until at least the middle of the nineteenth century (Quaife 1920, 20, 24) . Official investigation of the claims culminated in a Congressional report on January 28, 1825 that rejected them. It was determined that Carver, if he had contracted the deed, had done so illegally, since British law at the time forbade individuals from such transactions. Additionally, although sought, no Indians corroborated the land grant or its Native American signatories (American State Papers). This copy, made around 1840 perhaps as a souvenir, follows the text and design components found in the 1781 edition of Carver’s Travels. MSN/EA 10098.

Quaife, Milo M., “Jonathan Carver and the Carver Grant,” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. VII, no. 1 (June 1920): 3-25.
“Indian Grant to Captain Carver,” January 28, 1825, American State Papers: Public Lands 4: 82-84.

1 vol. partly printed; 20 cm., 65 leaves, with 75 pages of autographs. An album containing the signatures of approximately 218 different members of the United States House of Representatives, 34th Congress (1855-57). The book was certainly compiled during the third session of the 34th Congress (1 December 1856 to 3 March 1857), as a number of the signers were seated only for that session, and several of the autographs are dated December 1856. The book contains a total of 239 individual autographs, as some members signed more than once. Signatures are typically three or four to a page, and usually include the member's place of residence. There is no indication of ownership. MSN/EA 9301-1-B