Hibbard Collection, 1695-1875
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Guide to the Hibbard Collection, 1695-1875 Administrative Information Title and Dates: Hibbard Collection, 1695-1875 (bulk 1800-1850) Repository: New Hampshire Historical Society 30 Park Street Concord, NH 03301 603-228-6688 http://www.nhhistory.org/ Collection Number: 1957.011 Author of Finding Aid: Sandra L. Wheeler Creator: Sarah King Hale Hibbard (1822-1879) Language: The materials in this collection are in English. Extent: 4 boxes, approximately 20 shelf inches Abstract: The Hibbard Collection was amassed by a 19th century collector of autographs and other historical documents. It contains an assortment of account book pages, autographs, deeds, letters, military commissions and orders, prints, receipts, town charters and other items related mostly to New Hampshire. It also includes materials from people of national importance, most notably letters written by Abigail Adams, John Hancock and Thomas Jefferson. There are account book pages with expenditures by the Province of New Hampshire in the late 1600s, depositions about James Johnson and his family’s captivity by the Indians in 1754, trials of suspected loyalists in 1776, and activities of John W. Weeks and Moody Bedel during the War of 1812. Access and Use Acquisition Information and Provenance: The Hibbard Collection contains materials collected by Sarah King Hale Hibbard. She was the daughter of Salma Hale, an early member and president of the New Hampshire Historical Society. It was given to the Society in 1881 by her brother, George S. Hale, and apparently was originally catalogued as a book in the library. It was moved to the manuscript collection in 1957 or 1958. Processing Information: This collection arrived in four volumes. The papers were removed from the volumes and filed in boxes based on the volume in which they were located (one box per volume). The folders reflect the pages of the volumes and are in the order of the original pages. The collection was processed by an unknown person at an unknown date. The finding aid was written by Sandra L. Wheeler in June 2014. This finding aid follows the standards set forth by Describing Archives: A Content Standard. Access Restrictions: Available for research. Location: The collection is housed at the New Hampshire Historical Society in Concord, New Hampshire. Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements: The collection is on paper and is in stable condition. Copyright/Conditions Governing Use: For permission to reproduce or publish materials from this collection, please contact the New Hampshire Historical Society. Researchers are responsible for following all copyright and intellectual property laws. Preferred Citation: The Hibbard Collection, 1957.011. New Hampshire Historical Society, Concord, NH. Collection Overview Biographical Information: Sarah King Hale Hibbard (1822-1879) was the daughter of Salma Hale of Keene, NH, who was an attorney, prominent New Hampshire politician (United States Congress 1817-1819; New Hampshire Senate 1824-1825 and 1845-1846; New Hampshire House of Representatives 1823, 1828, 1844), and one of the earliest members of the New Hampshire Historical Society, of which he was President from 1830 to 1832. She married Stephen R. Bellows of Walpole, NH in 1843, but he died less than a year later. In 1848, she married Harry Hibbard (1816-1872) of Bath, NH. He was an attorney and politician who served in the New Hampshire House of Representatives (1843-1845), the New Hampshire Senate (1845, 1847, 1848), and in the United States House of Representatives (1849-1855). Mrs. Hibbard accompanied him to Washington, DC, but otherwise the couple lived in Bath. Their only child, Alice, died young. Mrs. Hibbard was deeply interested in history, especially that of of New Hampshire. After the death of her husband, she spent much of her leisure time gathering books and manuscripts illustrative of that history. She died at Bath on October 5, 1879. Arrangement: Materials are arranged as they came to the New Hampshire Historical Society except that they have been removed from bound volumes and placed in folders. Each box corresponds to the volume of the same number. For Volumes 1-3 (Boxes 1-3), each folder contains a five page increment but the order within each 5 page sequence has been lost. Therefore, in Boxes 1-3, items in each folder are in alphabetical order by author. When Volume 4 was disassembled, whoever did it labeled each item with information about which specific page it was on. In Box 4, therefore, materials are in the order in which they were found in the bound volumes. The collection contained glued items into the volumes in the following rough order: --The first two and a half volumes are papers and autographs of individuals at first in somewhat random order (Box 1), then alphabetically (Box 2 and the first half of Box 3). --The second half of the third volume (Box 3) contains documents from towns and the New Hampshire Legislature. --The fourth volume (Box 4) contains materials relating to the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. Sometime before 1995, 24 Timothy Bedel items were noted to have been removed from the volumes and placed with the Timothy Bedel Papers. These have been returned to the Hibbard collection and placed together in Box 4, folder 23 because there was no indication of exactly where they had been in the original volumes. Boxes two, three and four have indices written by an unknown person, probably in the 19th century. While helpful, the accuracy of the entries is uncertain. There is a 3x5 card file index to this collection found in the Society’s library, created by an unknown person. It occasionally offers additional information about the contents of letters or people mentioned in a letter. Due to the nature of the collection and the availability of the card file index, the collection has been processed at the item level. Scope and Content: The Hibbard Collection consists of unrelated items accumulated by a 19th century collector Sarah King Hale Hibbard. The collection includes account book pages, autographs, bills, correspondence, invitations, legal documents, military orders and commissions, receipts, petitions, prints, town documents (charters, accounts, and lists of grantees). Although Mrs. Hibbard’s focus was on New Hampshire people and events, she also collected items written by people of national importance. Most notable among these are: Abigail Adams to Mrs. Cranch, Box 1, folder 36 John Hancock to his wife, Box 2, folder 27 Thomas Jefferson to Salma Hale, Box 1, folder 20 In addition to acquiring this sort of material written by famous people, Mrs. Hibbard seems to have been interested in and collected materials about: 1. Town charters and accounts, [Box 3] 2. The captivity of James Johnson and his family by Native Americans in 1754. [Box 3, folder 33] 3. Military documents, especially pertaining to: -- The Revolutionary War. There are legal documents about accusations against several people of being loyalists, with depositions both supporting the charges and defending the accused. [Box 4, folders 13-16] -- The War of 1812. Mrs. Hibbard was particularly interested in John W. Weeks and Moody Bedel, both of whom led New Hampshire regiments in that war. There are orders, supply requisitions, recruitment reports and accounts. The Weeks correspondence continues into the 1830s, when he received letters from soldiers concerning Plains Indian affairs. [Box 4, folders 4-10]. There is no information about the sources of the items that Mrs. Hibbard collected or what, if any, her criteria were for acquiring materials. Some prints from the collection have been removed from the Collection and placed in the museum. These prints can be identified through their accession number 1957.011 (v) given in the description of the print. Contents List Autographs are often written on small pieces of paper and are called autographs in the finding aid. Sometimes there is also a print of the person; these often also have a signature, but there has been no attempt to discover if those are autographs or facsimiles. They are therefore called signatures in the finding aid. Dates: years have been completed, when known – "43," for example, has been completed to 1843. Incomplete dates giving only month or only month and day are as in the letter. Name of addressee: These are the writer indicated either on the envelope or in the salutation. Thus, Harry Hibbard is sometimes addressed by his full name, other times by H. Hibbard. Letters for which no name is found have the addressee as in the salutation (“My Dear Friend” for example). Name of author of letter: Authors’ names have been supplied whenever possible. Occasionally, names have been assigned based on what is written on the back as a notation by the recipient. When a name is illegible it is so noted; when only partial names are legible they are indicated as “Com__, C___”. Box 1: Volume 1 Folder 1 Volume 1, pages 1-5 Genet, Edmund to “Mr. Hancock, Governor of Massachusetts,” July, 1793. in French Governor Gore, autograph, not dated Gore, Christian to Andrew Craigie, September 7, 1788 Hibbard, Sarah, biographical sketch, perhaps by her brother, George S. Hale Hibbard, Sarah King Hale, photograph, not dated Hibbard, S.H., to G.H. Bell, February 19, 1878 Whitney, E., to Eliza Blake, February 1, 1807 Folder 2 Volume 1, pages 6-10 deCheverus, Leon Louis Anne Magdeline Lefebre, Archbishop of Bordeaux, to Samuel May, September 3, 1833 Eustis, William, broadside with funeral arrangements for, not dated Story, Joseph, autograph Story, Joseph, to B.B. Thatcher, August 26, 1836 Story, Joseph to William Prescott, December 29, 1837 Thatcher, B.B., to Sarah Hale, September 19 Folder 3 Volume 1, pages 11-15 Crawford, Thomas to Salma Hale, July 27, 1811 Griswold, Rufus to James Fields, not dated Pickering, Timothy, directive to Artillery Corps, April 18, 1795 Savage, James to Salma Hale, June 26, 1851 Illegible to “Craigie,” December 21, 1788 Unidentified: slip of paper summarizing the life of an unknown person born June 10, 1753, Member of Congress 1821-1823, Minister to Holland, 1815, Governor of Massachusetts 1825-1825, dying in office.