An 1837 map of Marietta, Ohio, contained in the papers of archaeologist E. G. Squier, tells a rich story of Indigenous architecture, nationalist aspirations, and Midwestern pride.
People with grievances often make the best preservers of the past – as in this 1801 letter from Pierre Charles L’Enfant to Alexander Hamilton, in which the architect and city planner complains that he was never paid for his work on New York’s Federal Hall in 1789.
Fifty-six unpublished, mostly newly acquired letters from Philip Schuyler (1733-1804) to his daughter, Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, and her husband Alexander Hamilton, have been transcribed by Manuscript Division staff. The transcriptions are now available online, alongside images of the letters, as part of the Alexander Hamilton Papers on the Library of Congress website.
In 1792 Spanish-Peruvian naval officer Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra sailed up the coast of North America to meet with George Vancouver and the leaders of the Nuu-chah-nulth people of Nootka Sound, Vancouver Island. His journal is in the Manuscript Division.
In 1797 Vice-President Thomas Jefferson learned that the perpetrator of the Yellow Creek Massacre was not the man he had named in his Notes on the State of Virginia. A letter newly acquired by the Manuscript Division tells the story.
A marble case in the Great Hall in the Thomas Jefferson Building once held the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. This blog describes that “shrine,” from its opening in 1924 to its closing ceremony in 1952.
Philip Schuyler's letters about yellow fever in the Alexander Hamilton Papers reveal a complicated and many-sided character responding to a dangerous and frightening moment in American history.