Jeremy Belknap Papers 1637-1891; bulk: 1758-1799 Guide to the Collection

Table of Contents Collection Summary Biographical Timeline Sources Collection Description Arrangement Acquisition Information Other Formats Organization Detailed Description of the Collection Preferred Citation Access Terms

Collection Summary

Biographical Timeline

Sources

Additional detailed information on the life of Jeremy Belknap can be found in Clio's Consort: Jeremy Belknap and the Founding of the Massachusetts Historical Society, written by Louis L. Tucker, director of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and published by the MHS, 1990.

Collection Description

The Jeremy Belknap papers include both his personal papers and historical documents collected for his research and writing.

The correspondent most heavily represented in the collection is Belknap's friend and bookseller, Ebenezer Hazard. Other Belknap correspondents include Abigail Adams, John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Benjamin Smith Barton, Joseph Stevens Buckminster, John Eliot, William Ellery, Benjamin Franklin, Gideon Hawley, David Howell, John Jay, James Madison, Samuel Miller, William Dandridge Peck, Timothy Pickering, John Pintard, Benjamin Rush, Stephen Van Rensselaer, Earl of Warwick, George Washington, Josiah Waters, Noah Webster, John Wentworth, and Paine Wingate.

Names represented in the historical documents collected by Belknap include Jonathan Belcher, Joseph Dudley, Jeremiah Dummer, Henry Newman, Samuel Penhallow, William Pepperrell, William Shirley, Peter Warren, and John Winthrop.

Belknap's other papers include diaries, sermons, notes, drafts and manuscripts of his writings, correspondence with publishers, commonplace-books, memoranda books, genealogical and meteorological records, notes and journals of his study of the Oneida Indians, and materials related to his service as a minister and the founding of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Also included is a small collection of papers of Mary Hartford, a black woman who resided with the family since childhood.

Arrangement

The main body of the collection remains arranged by an early classification system used by the Massachusetts Historical Society. The collection has not been rearranged because most of the items are individually cataloged in the MHS manuscript catalog. Many items in this collection have also previously been cited in publications by this old classification system. The arrangement is somewhat arbitrary and does not represent any systematic, chronological, or thematic arrangement of the materials. (Two exceptions to this arrangement are the letters between Belknap and Ebenezer Hazard, which constitute 161.E, 161.F, and 161.M, and the historical documents relating to the Louisbourg Expedition during the French and Indian War, which can be found in 61.B and 61.C.)

There are several sets of old call numbers by which the collection is arranged: 61.A-C; 161.A-M; 013.9; A.1, A.2, and A.3. The main body of the collection falls into the volumes numbered 161 and 61, and for this reason, these have been placed first in the collection. Items with the remaining call numbers have been arranged by format and then by subject or date with an awareness of the old call numbers. In many cases, items in the collection have had more than one number over time due to changes in the cataloging and storing of the manuscript collections. Where known, these numbers are all listed.

While much of the collection remains tipped into volumes, some parts have been disbound and stored in acid-free folders and boxes. These boxed materials remain in their sequential numbered series despite being physically arranged in a different format. 61 and 161 contain the bulk of the loose manuscripts, but are not necessarily arranged in chronological order and overlap in dates among the several volumes. Historical documents can often be found in the same volume or box as Belknap's contemporary materials.

161.G is the John Davis papers. The location of 161.H is unknown.

Acquisition Information

The majority of the papers were donated by Elizabeth Belknap, daughter of Jeremy Belknap, in 1858. Many of these items contain book plates and notes indicating this donation.

The volumes of tipped-in papers known as 61.A-C were donated by Jeremy Belknap, presumably at the time of the founding of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Folders 161.K and 161.L were donated by Mrs. Jules Marcou in 1886 and 1887, as well as some of the loose manuscripts (including genealogical material), which can be found in Box 5.

Philippe Marcou donated most of the volumes now located in Boxes 6 and 7, as well as most of the items now interfiled in Box 5, in 1919.

Charles Deane donated 35 manuscript copies of letters from Jeremy Belknap to Ebenezer Hazard (in Folder 161.M) in 1880.

Mrs. William W. Frances and John I. Coddington donated a small booklet entitled "Articles communicated to Jeremy Belknap for his History of New Hampshire" in memory of Edward Goodwin Wesson in March of 1938. This item can be found in Box 5.

Mary Lincoln Eliot donated a small collection of letters from Jeremy Belknap to John Eliot (1777-1786) in May 1922. These letters (013.2) are now in Box 5.

A small collection of papers (eight items) related to Belknap's ministries were purchased in April 1991 and can be found in Folder 13 in Box 5.

Other Formats

Many of the volumes in this collection have been microfilmed. Use the table below to locate microfilm copies of individual volumes.

Volume	Location
61.A, 013.9	P-380, Reel 1
61.B, 013.9	P-380, Reel 2
61.C, 013.9	P-380, Reel 3
161.A, 013.2	P-380, Reel 4
161.B, 013.2	P-380, Reel 5-6
161.C, 013.3	P-380, Reel 6-7
161.F, 013.5	P-380, Reel 8-9
A.1.8	P-363, Reel 2; P-380, Reel 10
A.1.9	P-363, Reel 2; P-380, Reel 10
A.1.10	P-380, Reel 10
013.9i, A.1.16	P-380, Reel 11

Some of the items in this collection have also been published. Correspondence between Ebenezer Hazard and Jeremy Belknap has been published in Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 5th series, vols. II-III. Belknap's journal of his trip to Dartmouth College has been published as Jeremy Belknap's Journey to Dartmouth in 1774, edited by Edward C. Lathem (Hanover, N.H.: Dartmouth Publications, 1950).

Organization of the Collection

The collection is organized into the following series:

Detailed Description of the Collection

Preferred Citation

Jeremy Belknap papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.

Access Terms

This collection is indexed under the following headings in ABIGAIL, the online catalog of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Researchers desiring materials about related persons, organizations, or subjects should search the catalog using these headings.