Collection Description

The Foster family autograph collection consists of 30 document boxes, 2 volumes, and 4 oversize boxes organized into four series: I. Foster family autograph collection, II. Foster family papers, III. Foster and Estabrook legal records, and IV. Abbott Lawrence papers.

Series I. Foster family autograph collection, 1621-1917, comprises the bulk of the collection and contains autograph letters and notes, diaries, printed documents, broadsides, and other ephemera collected by the families of Joseph Dwight (1702-1765), Jedediah Foster (1726-1779), and his son Dwight Foster (1757-1823), with additions from several generations of their descendants. Included are documents and letters of United States presidents and many members of their cabinets from the administrations of George Washington through Ulysses S. Grant. Of particular interest is a letter from Thomas Jefferson to Roger Sherman's grandson giving Jefferson's high opinion of Sherman; a letter from Jefferson to Dwight Foster with original drawings of Jefferson's patent new mould board with accompanying description; and correspondence between John Adams and Roger Sherman in which the new federal constitution is contrasted with the British government. Also, a letter from Secretary of War James McHenry relating to the Northwest Territory and accounts of surveys of the territory, as well as letters from James Munroe, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and many others.

The collection includes autographs of the signers of the Declaration of Independence (including Samuel Adams, John Hancock, Josiah Bartlett, Charles Carroll, George Clymer, Francis Hopkinson, Samuel Huntington, Robert Morris, and others); members of the Continental Congress (including James Bowdoin, Alexander Hamilton, Patrick Henry, John Jay, and Rufus King, among others); United States congressmen (including De Witt Clinton, Fisher Ames, John Randolph, James Hillhouse, Jefferson Davis, among others); governors and senators, mostly of Massachusetts but some from other colonies and states, ca. 1700-1870 (such as Rufus Choate, Benjamin Goodhue, Harrison Gray Otis, Sir Francis Bernard, Simon Bradstreet, Thomas Hutchinson, Thomas Pownall, William Shirley, Daniel Webster, among many others); and Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court justices, including Samuel Sewall. Literary figures, scientists, and economists are represented by letters from Thomas Prince, Horace Greeley, William Cullen Bryant, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Washington Irving, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and others. There are also letters, autographs, and documents of notable persons involved in the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era, with some earlier and later French autographs. These include generals, ministers, royalty, scientists, and literary figures, and the autographs of Henry III, and Louis XIII and Louis XIV of France.

The Foster family autograph collection also includes material related to the French and Indian War, such as the orderly book of Gen. David Wooster, 1759; and material related to the Revolutionary War, such as a letter from Gen. Rufus Putnam, 26 Mar. 1783, detailing his ideas on government, military and civilian responsibilities, and Putnam's eyewitness account of the "Newburgh Conspiracy."

Series II. Foster family papers, 1648-1915, includes personal, legal, and military papers kept by generations of the Foster and related Dwight families of Massachusetts, including Joseph Dwight (1703 1765), Dwight Foster (1757-1823), Jedediah Foster (1726 1779), and Dwight Foster (1757-1823). This series also includes a diary kept by Joseph Dwight during the French and Indian War, 1756. There are letters of autograph value in this series, as well, just as there are letters received by members of the Foster and Dwight families in the first series.

Series III. Foster and Estabrook legal records consist of legal correspondence kept by Dwight Foster (1828-1884) while serving as a lawyer with the firm Foster and Estabrook in Worcester, Mass., 1856-1857.

Series IV. Abbott Lawrence papers, 1836-1891, contains personal papers and correspondence, accounts, and legal documents related to family estates managed by Abbott Lawrence of Boston, Mass.