Manuscripts
Life in Libby Prison manuscript
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Officers of the United States Army and Navy prisoners of war. Libby Prison Richmond, Va
Visual Materials
Image of a register of United States Army and Navy prisoners of war listing the names of officers imprisoned by rank during the American Civil War; four captioned scenes from Confederate military prison Libby Prison in Richmond, Virginia, in corners; bald eagle with American flag, shield, arrows and olive branch at top center; Union soldiers and sailors with swords, bayonets, and harpoons at left and right center.
priJLC_MIL_000797
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Duncan McKercher papers
Manuscripts
The collection includes three pocket diaries kept by McKercher from January 1, 1862 to March 3, 1865, detailing his military service and his imprisonment. Also included are memoirs, based on the diaries that McKercher composed later, and some additional regimental records. There is also a group of 41 notes from South Carolina enslavers requesting various forms of punishment for enslaved persons. The requests are addressed to the Master of the Charleston "workhouse," the city's notorious jail for enslaved persons. McKercher apparently took these papers while incarcerated in Charleston jail on his way to Libby Prison. Also included is a military commission issued by Governor of Alabama, May 29, 1861, a special instruction for officers guarding Libby Prison, April 30, 1864, and a letter from Theodore Schock, a prospector of Needleton, Colorado describing his wife's suicide, written on January 9, 1889.
mssHM 48562-48568
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Duncan McKercher papers
Manuscripts
The collection includes three pocket diaries kept by McKercher from January 1, 1862 to March 3, 1865, detailing his military service and his imprisonment. Also included are memoirs, based on the diaries that McKercher composed later, and some additional regimental records. There is also a group of 41 notes from South Carolina enslavers requesting various forms of punishment for enslaved persons. The requests are addressed to the Master of the Charleston "workhouse," the city's notorious jail for enslaved persons. McKercher apparently took these papers while incarcerated in Charleston jail on his way to Libby Prison. Also included is a military commission issued by Governor of Alabama, May 29, 1861, a special instruction for officers guarding Libby Prison, April 30, 1864, and a letter from Theodore Schock, a prospector of Needleton, Colorado describing his wife's suicide, written on January 9, 1889.
mssHM 48562-48568
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Libby Prison
Visual Materials
The Singleton Collection is organized into four discrete yet interrelated units. The first consists of 79 photographs by Mathew Brady (1823-1896) and Alexander Gardner (1821-1882) of scenes of the Civil War taken between 1861 and 1865. Included are group portraits of generals with their staffs, important wartime sites and activities, and photographs of paintings depicting various skirmishes. While the photographs were taken by Brady and Gardner during the war, the images were printed around 1885 by John Taylor and marketed by the firm of Taylor & Huntington. These photographer-entrepreneurs hoped to capitalize on twenty-fifth anniversary war reunions and commemorations by reissuing the once-familiar views. On the verso of each image is a partial list of the photographs sold by Taylor & Huntington for 75 cents a piece. The second grouping of photographs depicts two views of Abraham Lincoln and portraits of the Lincoln conspirators and their execution. These were also taken by Brady and Gardner during the war and, as with the first group, printed and issued around 1885 by Taylor & Huntington. Of particular rarity are the fourteen photographs of the Lincoln assassination conspirators including portraits of David Herold, George Atzerodt, Edward Spangler, two views of Lewis Payne, two views of Michael O'Laughlin, and an unidentified conspirator. Additionally, there is a complete set of three images depicting the execution of Mrs. Surratt and the conspirators taken by Alexander Gardner on July 7, 1865, as well as three of the five known images documenting the execution of Captain Wirz, the notorious Keeper of Andersonville Prison. Eighty-three cabinet portraits of Confederate Generals and other Southern leaders by George S. Cook (1819-1902) comprise the third section of the collection. Cook was a friend and former employee of Matthew Brady, and he provided E.& H.T. Anthony Co. with portraits from the South, including the first portrait of Colonel Robert Anderson. These portraits may come from sources other than Cook as he purchased competing photographers negatives, issuing them on his mounts. These portraits were taken in the 1860s but printed between 1880 and 1890 when Cook operated his Richmond, Virginia studio at 913 East Main Street. The last grouping of photographs contains 210 images by William H. Tipton (1850-1929), the self-described "Battlefield Photographer." The imperial-sized photographs depict the numerous monuments erected on the Gettysburg battlefield to honor the soldiers who fought and died in this decisive battle. The photographs date from the 1880s. The Singleton Collection constitutes of one of the most complete historic archives of the Gettysburg monuments.
photCL 445
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Correspondence and manuscripts
Manuscripts
The correspondence in the collection almost entirely consists of letters sent to Alice Jones MacMonnies from about 1917 until 1929. The bulk of the correspondence is from Alice's mother Georgina Sullivan Jones, and the letters focus on news regarding family members and acquaintances, including General John Pershing. Georgina writes of sculptor Prince Paul Troubetzkoy's commission to create a bust of Henry E. Huntington in 1917 and of her hatred of Troubetzkoy, and relates being angered by a discussion that rated Troubetzkoy and Auguste Rodin as the greatest living sculptors with no mention of MacMonnies. Other letters describe events related to World War I, such as the raising of funds for French orphans and news of a friend's brother who was killed in an "aeroplane accident" in France. An undated letter from Alice's nephew Gregory Jones (the son of her half-brother Roy) describes war conditions in St. Rhomble, France, and the "defiant" attitude of German prisoners-of-war toward the French and American soldiers. A series of 1925 letters recount Georgina's trip through Spain and France, and other topics covered throughout the correspondence include Georgina Jones Walton's play Light of Asia (1927), the Jones' mining interests in Alaska, Alice's interest in New York real estate, and memories of John P. Jones, whom Georgina wished had "lived to see the wonders that science has accomplished and what has been done in the film world" (1933). A few letters from Alice regarding the Jones estate before and after Georgina's death, including a notebook of property values from 1924, are also included. The diary volume was kept by Georgina Sullivan Jones during her 1896 European tour with Alice following her graduation from Bryn Mawr, and chronicles their voyage across the Atlantic on board the St.Paul of the American Line, as well as their travels through London, Paris, Berlin, Beyreuth, Munich, Innsbruck, Venice, Milan, Rome, and Zurich.The photographs of Alice MacMonnies and her sisters Georgina and Marion range from her childhood to adult years, including her 1896 class photo from Bryn Mawr College.
mssHM 76195-76259
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Henry Jones diaries
Manuscripts
This collection consists of seven diaries kept by Henry Jones from 1837-1871. Jones' daily entries, often accompanied by philosophical reflections, sentiments, and opinions, begin in November 1837 and continue largely uninterrupted until the end of 1858. Entries for the year 1860 consist of only a few in December. The diary resumes in 1864 and continues until July 1870, when Jones departs for Nebraska. In his diaries, Jones' presents a detailed account of his personal life and his relationship with friends and family, along with the life of the Quaker communities in Gwynedd, Upper Dublin, Montgomery Township, and other villages in Pennsylvania. He relates information on the antebellum and Civil War era because of his frequent trips to Philadelphia, Maryland, New York, and New Jersey. Also included are three cartes-de-visite: one of Henry Jones and two of Mary Yerkes Shoemaker. Jones meticulously documents the local, state, and national abolitionist meetings, conventions, lectures, including women's organizations, that Jones attended for almost 30 years. He writes about his ties with Hicksite Quaker preachers, leading non-Quaker abolitionists, and social reformers, including Lucretia Mott, Frederick Douglass, Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner, and John Mercer Langston. He describes political meetings and conventions between 1838 and 1896, including temperance meetings, festivals, the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention of 1838, the Whig, and then Republican party nominating conventions. He reveals his opinions on economic and political issues, revivalism, phrenology, "animal magnetism," telegraph, alternative medicine, and spiritualism. He also lists books read, including the writings of Frederick Douglass, Lydia M. Child, and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
mssHM 83955-83964