Collection Description

The Leverett Saltonstall autograph collection consists 3 boxes of letters written to Massachusetts Senator Leverett Saltonstall throughout his political career and into retirement from politicians, politicians' wives, journalists, and television personalities, discussing political opinions, friendship, pending legislation, and campaign support. The collection includes letters from Presidents George Bush, Calvin Coolidge, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Gerald Ford, Herbert Hoover, Lyndon B. Johnson, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and Franklin D. Roosevelt; politicians Edward Brooke, James Michael Curley, Michael Dukakis, Edward and Robert F. Kennedy, Tip O'Neill, Endicott Peabody, Francis Sargent, and Paul Tsongas among many others; political wives Barbara Bush, Kitty Dukakis, Jacqueline Kennedy (Onassis), and Eleanor Roosevelt; journalist Peter Jennings; media personalities Bob Hope and Lawrence Welk; and many other figures from the 20th-century political scene. Included in the collection are similar letters addressed to Leverett's son William Saltonstall, dating from 1979 to 1996.

The collection also contains a guest book kept at the Massachusetts State House while Saltonstall was governor and signed by visitors between 1939 and 1944, including George and Gracie Burns, the Von Trapp family, and Mae West, among other celebrities; and a bound volume of testimonial letters written to Saltonstall from political colleagues when he retired from the Senate in 1966.