Manuscripts
1809-1829
- Description
- A collection containing approximately 5000 items from 1809 to 1943; the main portion of the collection is the correspondence of several generations of the Waller family centering on Henry Waller, his parents, siblings, wife, children, friends, and business associates. The bulk of the collection consists of the correspondence between Henry Waller and his wife Sarah Bell Langhorne Waller and their children. The detailed letters describe their life in Kentucky and Chicago and discuss family matters; social news; their feelings for each other; their religious reflections (the Wallers were devout Presbyterians); parenting; schools; political affairs; legal practice; and business. Also included are a few pieces of political and legal correspondence, including individual letters by John Marshall, Garret Davis, and John J. Crittenden. Also included are Henry Waller's letters to his parents written during his studies at West Point from 1829 to 1833, and his travels, including a trip to his sister's plantation in Mississippi in 1835. The collection also contains letters addressed to Sarah Bell Langhorne Waller, including those from Confederate prisoners and their families. Also included are items related to the arrest and imprisonment of William S. Waller, letters from Maurice Waller, John Duke Waller, Henry Waller, Jr., and other children to their parents, a group of military records documenting Edward C. Waller's service in the Spanish American War, and genealogical materials. There is also a small group of private and professional correspondence of Henry Waller's father, William Smith Waller who, for more than forty years, served as cashier of the Bank of Kentucky. Included are two letters by George Madison describing the War of 1812 in Kentucky. Other correspondents include Henry Waller's sister Catherine Waller Carson and her husband James Green Carson, a planter who owned and operated Canebrake Plantation in Mississippi, and then Airlie Plantation in East Carroll Parish, Louisiana. Their letters describe life on the cotton plantations, including discussions of enslaved people. There are also letters written by members of other branches of the Waller family as well as the related families of Langhorne, Breckenridge, Marshall, and others.
