This sub-series consists of incoming letters primarily concerned with Edes' charitable affiliations, the bulk written between 1870 and 1889. It includes letters from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1879), Oliver Wendell Holmes (1883-1886), John Greenleaf Whittier (1884), Edward Everett Hale (1885), Henry Cabot Lodge (1917), and many other notable literary and religious figures. The sub-series also includes an indexed, 993-page, wet letterpress copy book containing copies of hundreds of Edes' outgoing letters (many difficult to read) from 1869 to 1875.

This is a typewritten draft of Edes' "Memoir of Edward Wheelwright" (1824-1900), who was president of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts. It was published by the Colonial Society in May 1900.

This sub-series contains reprints of some of Edes' published submissions to the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, including letters, genealogical notes, and the January 1877 article "Marriages Solemnized in Pembroke, Mass. by the Rev. Thomas Smith, 1755-1787." It also contains circulars announcing Edes' candidacy for clerk of the Everett Mills Corporation and announcements of Everett Mills' annual stockholders meetings, as well as several tickets to exhibitions at the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association (for which Edes served as director in 1877-78). The series contains political fliers mentioning Edes as a Republican delegate from Charlestown's Ward 3, and also includes printed materials illustrating Edes' involvement with the Old South Church Museum, the Massachusetts Reform Club, the Boston Public Library and other charitable concerns.

This sub-series contains newspaper clippings primarily from the Boston Daily Advertiser, Boston Evening Transcript, Charlestown Chronicle and Charlestown Transcript. Most articles or letters to the editor were either written by or mention Henry Edes. Many of the articles pasted into the scrapbook entitled "Literary Scraps, Cuttings and Extracts" have been annotated with Edes' handwritten comments.

The bulk of this sub-series consists of Charlestown town records (1727-1847), including a bound journal of selectmen's meetings and overseers of the poor notes recorded by selectman Seth Sweetser from 1767 to 1778. Other town records are primarily financial in nature, including town accounts, orders from the selectmen to the town treasurer, town payments from poor relief funds and highway funds, bills paid by the town to various merchants, tradesmen and townspeople for services, and records of payments made and received by the Trustees of the Charlestown Free Schools.

The sub-series also includes records of the First Church of Charlestown (1697-1790), consisting of a 1697 letter from James Russell to church members, church baptismal records (1727-1744) and meeting records of the "ministerial house" building committee (1790). Also in this sub-series are records of Charlestown's Second Congregational Church, founded in 1819 and known as Harvard Church after 1839. These include correspondence, printed invitations to ministers' ordinations (1818-1840) and an 1839 letterbook containing copies of correspondence and committee meeting minutes.

Also included here are notes recording the early history of Charlestown from 1623 to 1656, written by an anonymous eighteenth-century historian, as well as the 1861 records of Charlestown's Bunker Hill Drill Club. These records include receipts of payment for service, bills for military uniforms and printing, and a membership list.

This sub-series includes documents relating to the early history of Connecticut, which were transcribed and annotated by Edes and published in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register from 1869-1871. They include court records, records of the commissioners of the United Colonies of New England, the correspondence of John Pynchon, and correspondence between Connecticut's General Assembly and London's Court of St. James.

The sub-series also includes records relating to the early history of Yale University, transcribed and annotated by Edes in the Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts in 1899. Documents include "an Act for the Further Incouragment of Yale College" (1719), "Orders and appointments to be observed in the Collegiate School in Connecticut" (1719) and correspondence of the trustees about funds for support of the school.

Also in this sub-series are letters to Timothy Woodbridge, a Hartford, Connecticut minister who served as a Yale trustee, including letters from Jeremy Dummer and Cotton Mather. Woodbridge's 1709 Yale diploma is found here as well.

This sub-series contains documents relating to individuals and families researched by Edes, some as part of his family's genealogy, others as part of his research on Charlestown history, and many for their own historical interest. They include correspondence; account books, receipts and other financial records; deeds; indentures; wills; journals; sermons; and school papers. Of interest are the business records of Boston merchant Richard Clarke (1763-1775), including a 1773 contract with the East India Company, the Civil War letters of J. Bates Dickson (1861-1864), and the letters and sermons of Rev. Thomas Prentiss of Charlestown (1813-1817).

Of particular significance are the papers of Thomas Marshall, the commanding officer of Castle Island in Boston Harbor during the Revolutionary War. They include military orders to receive his commission and raise a regiment, correspondence about raising troops, military activities around Boston, letters and orders from Generals George Washington, Benjamin Lincoln, and Rufus Putnam, muster rolls, letters from Samuel Otis, personal correspondence, and a warrant for army lands.

This sub-series contains a volume of the 1662 meeting minutes for the United Colonies of New England, whose representatives including Thomas Danforth and John Winthrop. Topics covered are mainly colonial issues and relations with the Native Americans. Also within the sub-series are the "Records of the New Church at the South End of Boston," later known as the Hollis Street Church. They date from its founding in 1732 to 1789, and include church meeting records, church admissions and baptisms.

Loose papers found within this sub-series include letters written by Thomas Dudley (1648), correspondence, indentures, accounts, petitions, deeds, wills, court orders, "a short account of a trading voyage" (1710), marriage agreements, baptismal records from an unidentified church (1743-1748), probate records, a General Assembly bill for the government of Boston (1790), shipping documents (1800-1805), a report on a detachment of Marines aboard the U.S.S. Constitution (1804), sermons and religious notes, and military appointments. The sub-series also contains documents from Edes' "autograph collection" including letters signed by John Adams, James Madison, Daniel Webster, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Lloyd Garrison, Commodore Isaac Hull, Horace Greely, James Fields, Rutherford B. Hayes and William Dean Howells.

This item includes the list of original proprietors, organizational documents, by-laws, annual meeting minutes, and committee meeting minutes.

This sub-series includes building specifications for the chapel, building contracts, bills and receipts, financial accounts, correspondence, agreements for use of the chapel, notices of shareholders' meetings, voting records, committee meetings, and a copy of an Act of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts declaring the corporation's right to sell the property. It also includes a large poster advertising the chapel's sale in 1879.

Records in this sub-series include an account book containing stock lists and a copy of the 1879 decree of dissolution from the Supreme Judicial Court; bills for carpentry, building supplies, furniture, a melodeon, printed materials, and advertising; a check book, check register and checks from the Bunker Hill National Bank of Charlestown (the bulk of which are dated 1884): and fire insurance policies for the building, its furnishings, the piano and the organs.

This sub-series contains records that relate primarily to the chapel's dissolution, including a volume of returned stock certificates with signed receipts for the distribution of assets, and responses to circulars sent to stockholders by the treasurer requesting information on the stockholders' risk in regard to disposal of funds (1879) and the location of original stock certificates (1883). Also included here are stockholders' proxies, or assigned powers of attorney.