Presidential Letters at the Massachusetts Historical Society An Overview Support for this project provided by L. Dennis Shapiro through The Arzak Foundation.

Table of Contents Summary Introduction Organization Detailed Description Preferred Citation Access Terms

Summary

Introduction

This subject guide brings together descriptions and locations of all known letters written by presidents found in the Massachusetts Historical Society's manuscript and autograph collections. The guide is not a detailed inventory of every collection, but an overview of the Society's presidential holdings.

The Massachusetts Historical Society is famous for the thousands of letters of Presidents John Adams, John Quincy Adams, and Thomas Jefferson held in the Adams Family Papers and the Coolidge Collection of Thomas Jefferson Papers. This guide describes more than 3,500 letters found in other collections written by all U.S. presidents through George H. W. Bush. While the guide emphasizes letters written during each president's term of office, it includes an overview of letters written throughout the lifetime of each president. Although not the main emphasis, the guide also lists some manuscript copies of letters and other important writings such as Washington's Newburgh Address and Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence. The lists of related materials note the existence of printed presidential papers, letters, and works, and other manuscript repositories that hold presidential papers.

As this guide was created for research purposes, documents such as commissions, circulars, and materials containing just signatures with no additional content are not included. Because this guide focuses on letters written by the U. S. presidents, other writings (speeches, pamphlets, books, etc.), artifacts, portraits, photographs, and letters written to presidents are not included.

The guide is organized into forty-five series (one series for each president listed chronologically). Within each series there can be up to six subseries listed as follows: presidential papers, collections, items, autographs, other materials, and related materials. Letters are described at the collection level (listed alphabetically by collection name) when two or more letters can be found within that collection. When collections primarily consist of papers by the president, they are listed under the presidential papers (i.e. The Adams Family Papers for John Adams and John Quincy Adams). Items are listed chronologically for collections that hold only one presidential letter. Autograph collections are listed alphabetically and include item and collection-level descriptions depending on the amount of presidential letters contained in each collection. Descriptions for the first three subseries include descriptions of recipients, dates, and subjects of the majority of letters found in the collections, except for links to autograph collections that already have an itemized finding aid online. The last two subseries, other materials and related materials, are listed alphabetically and emphasize additional materials held at the MHS including manuscript copies of letters and other important documents written by presidents (other materials), and other published materials and manuscript collections at other institutions (related) that are not included in the first three subseries. The Notes section used throughout this guide provides information about additional formats including microfilm, publication, and photocopies, and notes where originals are stored.

To find more information on these resources or to request materials described in this overview, readers may consult several MHS resources. The Society's online catalog, ABIGAIL, available at www.masshist.org/library/abigail.cfm, contains collection-level descriptions of the Society's manuscript collections and many of the photograph collections. Approximately 400 published and unpublished manuscript and photograph collection guides ("finding aids") contain more detailed information than the descriptions found in ABIGAIL. Many of the finding aids are fully searchable at the MHS website: www.masshist.org/findingaids, and more are added on a regular basis. The collection-level records in ABIGAIL also indicate if there is a finding aid available for the collection. Copies of the paper finding aids that have not yet been converted to electronic format are available in the MHS reading room.

The manuscript card catalog contains descriptions of approximately 320,000 individual items; very few of these appear in ABIGAIL. The published Catalog of Manuscripts of the Massachusetts Historical Society (G. K. Hall, 1969; 1980 supplement), available in more than 150 U.S. libraries, consists of photocopies of these item catalog cards. Although almost all of the collection-level descriptions in the Catalog have been revised or superseded in ABIGAIL, the published catalog remains a useful guide for descriptions of more than 300,000 individual manuscript items. The MHS card catalog, now available on microfiche in the Society's reading room, contains the cards in the published Catalog, as well as many additions and corrections.

Contents

The guide is organized into the following sections:

Detailed Description

Preferred Citation

When using the items described in this guide, researchers should cite the collection containing the item.

Access Terms

For information about the collections and items described in this guide, consult ABIGAIL, the online catalog of the Massachusetts Historical Society.