Manuscripts
Joseph Banks letter to a bookseller
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Joseph Lane letter to Joseph S. Ruckel
Manuscripts
Lane writes to Joseph Ruckel regarding the acquisition of a patent for Ruckel. However, as Ruckel did not fill out his name properly on land warrant forms, Lane writes "if I do not succeed, you will know the fault is not mine." Includes printed clipping with a biography of Joseph Lane, with the handwritten date "1987."
mssHM 29248
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Joseph Whitaker letter
Manuscripts
In this letter, written from Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, to an unknown addressee, Joseph Whitaker describes the Native Americans in the area: "...not many deer now the Indians kill about all there is a few Indians about all the time they speak muskrats and fish on the ice in the winter the muskrats build a kind of house of pieces of old bog one of them is worth a shilling to them. The skins they sell for six pence and eat the rest they don't wash themselves once a month and when they have good luck they paint themselves with all kinds of paint...." Whitaker also talks briefly about his farming and hunting.
mssHM 82459
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Joseph Cross letters
Manuscripts
Two autograph letters from Joseph Cross to his parents. The first letter, dated Dec. 7, 1806 (HM 62947), was written from Fort Michilimackinac. Cross describes an expedition in which he and a group of soldiers searched for and rescued nine soldiers who went missing while taking supplies to Fort Saint Joseph. Cross found the men on a "desart island," starving to death and contemplating "the horrid plan of killing and eating one of their number." He then proceeds to list the adventures that he had since his last letter home, including traveling "396 miles up Lake Michigan among the Indians," descending "the celebrated Falls of St. Mary in an Indian canoe," being shot at by two Indian "centinels" and "blown up in a gun room" after the stored ammunition caught on fire. He was injured in the last incident, but "owing to the skill and great attention of our Surgeon and good health and constitution" made full recovery, "without a scar."
mssHM 62947-62948
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Joseph Heller letter to Paul Hardacre
Manuscripts
This typewritten letter, written to Professor Paul Hardacre (who taught at Vanderbilt University) is as follows: Dear Professor Hardacre: Many thanks to you for sending me the photograph from The Times. I envy that man lying on the grass in Cornwall, not merely because he is reading Catch-22, but because he appears to be having a much better time doing it than I had all summer traipsing about all through Europe for Holiday magazine, which is why it has taken me so long to acknowledge your kindness in sending me the clipping. Thank you again. Cordially, Joseph Heller [signed]." With the letter is a newspaper clipping of an article entitled "Writing novels slowly but with hardly a catch," about Joseph Heller, from The Times, October 17, 1975.
mssHM 78362