Joseph H. Barrett correspondence

The correspondence of Joseph H. Barrett and his extended family. The bulk of the collection (354 letters) consists of Barrett's own personal and professional correspondence, both incoming and outgoing. The letters cover Barrett's entire life and career, especially his studies at Middlebury College (class of 1845); teaching at various private schools in Vermont and New Hampshire (1845-1848); his association with the American Whig Review and various New England newspapers (1848-1851); service in the Vermont House of Representatives (1851-1853); his courtship of Harriet Lowell and their marriage; intense religious soul-searching that led him from Congregationalism, to Universalism and finally to the Episcopal Church; reporting on politics for the Cincinnati Gazette (1857-1861), editorship of the Cincinnati Times and Chronicle (1868-1892), and his literary work, particularly his 1888, 1902, and 1904 biographies of Abraham Lincoln. Also included are letters to the editor received by Barrett as the editor of the Cincinnati Chronicle and Times. Correspondents include Barrett's wife Harriet, Samuel Mills Conant (1820-1855), a fellow Middlebury alumnus and publisher of the Vermont Union Whig; Park Benjamin (1809-1864), Jeremiah Eames Rankin (1828-1904), William H. Herndon, Benjamin Labaree (1801-1883), Edward McPherson, (1830-1895), Alfred Bult Mullett (1834-1890), William Frederick Poole (1821-1894), James Reed Spalding (1821-1872), and others.

Also included are letters by Barrett's extended family scattered from New England to California. This portion includes the letters of George H. Hilton, Barrett's brother-in-law, for whom he had procured a clerical position at the Navy Dept. Hilton's letter cover the period of the Civil War and describe the inner workings of the Navy Department and the young man's life in war-time Washington D.C. The collection also includes miscelleanous correspondence of the Hilton and Lowell families and the letters to Barrett from his friend M. Lowell Elliot of Santa Barbara, Calif. (1904-1910), detaling her life in Southern California.

The collection also contains ephemera, newspaper clippings and photographs of Joseph H. Barrett, his wife Harriet, and their son Arthur.