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Manuscripts of Early National and Antebellum America
Miscellaneous Manuscripts

What follows is a list of miscellaneous manuscripts of Early National and Antebellum America, from the North American manuscript holdings in the Department of Special Collections, Hesburgh Libraries of Notre Dame. Manuscripts included here date wholly or primarily from the years 1788 to 1860.

  • FASOLA TUNEBOOK. ca. 1793-1800 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]

  • WILLIAM COBBETT. NOTES FOR AN INDEX TO A YEAR'S RESIDENCE IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. c1818. 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.

  • HOWELL ROGERS RECEIPT BOOK. 1822. 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.

  • ELIJAH GRIFFITHS. "AN ESSAY ON THE CAUSE AND CURE OF REMITTENT FEVER." 1830. 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.

  • WASHINGTON IRVING MANUSCRIPTS. Ca. 1830-1852. 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.

  • LOUIS DESEILLE MANUSCRIPT. Before 1839. 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.

  • ANONYMOUS MEMOIR, "THE RECOLECTIONS OF A BOATMEN." 1839-1840. 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.

  • U. S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES AUTOGRAPH ALBUM. c1856. 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


  Related Collections:   Colonial & Revolutionary America Early National & Antebellum America American Civil War Modern America Sports

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