This collection is primarily concerned with Prof. James Renwick and his professional correspondence and papers, both as Professor of Natural Philosophy (Physics) at Columbia College and as a leading engineer. Many certificates of membership in honorary societies are included. There are letters from Washington Irving (1783-1859) to Prof. Renwick and to his mother, Jane Jeffrey Renwick, pertaining to contemporary events and Irving's own activities. The letters to Mrs. Renwick are about the travels and experiences of Irving and Renwick abroad. The collection also covers the affairs of the Prof. Renwick's grandfather, including documents concerning his land grants in New York State, and those of James Armstrong Renwick, including his valedictory address at Columbia College in 1876 and his class reunion in 1916. There are many legal documents, letters, and manuscripts of various members of the Renwick and Brevoort families; among these are Prof. Renwick's notes on his family genealogy and a memoir of Jane Jeffrey Renwick. Correspondents include Clement Clarke Moore, John A. Dix, Martin Van Buren, Secretary of State John Forsyth, and Secretary of the Navy James K. Paulding. There is one letter from Sir Edward Sabine (1788-1883), President of the Royal Society, giving his views on the American Civil War.
Family papers, including deeds, correspondence, documents, etc.
Correspondence files of Roberts Brothers, pertaining to all departments, editorial, production, advertising, and sales. Also, some miscellaneous letters and documents, unrelated to Roberts Brothers, which deal with various legal matters, including those of Frederick D. Ely and of William A. Dunn, from 1838 until 1932, and letters to the Secretary of Harvard University from 1900 to 1907.
Correspondence, documents and manuscripts from late seventeenth and eighteenth century France, especially from the French Revolution, collected by Sam Schaefler. Authors include J.B. Colbert Torcy and the Duchesse Du Lude. Many of the items from the French Revolution represent the work of the Committee of Public Safety and the Committee of General Security. French Revolutionary leaders represented in the collection include François-Antoine Boissy D'Anglas, Jean-Baptiste-Noel Bouchotte, Pierre Joseph Cambon, Lazare Carnot, Jean-Marie Collot D'Herbois, l'Abbʹe de Fauchet, Philippe-Antoine Merlin de Douai, Jean Victor Moreau. C.A. Prieur-Duvernois, and Antoine Joseph Santerre. In addition, the collection includes a letter from the Danish physicist Hans Christian Oersted to Sir John Herschel, a letter by the French poet Romain Rolland, a document of the Philadelphia Artists' Fund Society of 1846 with signatures of its officers, and an autograph letter and a photograph of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Three volumes of correspondence, including some letterbook copies; many sermons, individually bound; prayers; and other manuscript materials. Correspondenbce is with many of his well known contemporaries and deals largely with matters pertaining to his church or to King's College. Shelved with the collection are two card file boxes containing an old handwritten calendar with abstracts, 1710-1914, a set of cross reference entries, and a calendar of material not at Columbia, 1715-1785. Additional letters have been added
Letters, documents, accounts, papers, broadsides, pamphlets, and other printed and manuscript materials assembled by Seymour Adelman and presented to the Libraries in a series of gifts. The material ranges in date from 1724-1945 and is largely American, having to do with banking business, the arts and sciences, agriculture, the free press and commerce in the 18th and 19th centuries. Included are a number of autograph letters by Joseph J. Henry, William Henry, Jr., and Joel Roberts Poinsett. There are a number of letters addressed to Joseph Story and John B. Jervis. There is a group of letters from the immediate family of John Jay concerning references to him and another group of documents and letters by and concerning Matthew Clarkson
The Shutt Family Papers consists of one folder with deed and other land papers of the George C. Maurer and family of Rochester, as well as one photograph album of the Shutt family.
