Henry Ellsworth Wood papers

The collection contains manuscripts by Henry Ellsworth Wood, letters written by various authors, photographs, negatives, ephemera, an assay book, and photograph albums and scrapbooks. The collection spans several generations of the Wood family, focusing on the personal life and business activities of Henry Ellsworth Wood. The bulk of the collection consists of correspondence, including some 300 pieces from Henry Ellsworth Wood to his wife, Belle Matteson McGinnis Wood. These letters, composed over the fifty year period of their marriage, cover a wide range of aspects of their lives, including their immediate and extended family, their day-to-day activities, trips to visit family and friends, financial hardships, mining affairs in Colorado and Canada, and assorted business activities. Four generations of the Wood family are represented in the correspondence, including 69 letters composed between 1853 and 1856 by William Cowper Wood, his parents and siblings. The collection includes various drafts of Henry Ellsworth Wood's reminiscences of his childhood and early days in Leadville, the most comprehensive manuscript of this type being "I Remember." Also of note is the manuscript "Colorado in 1868," reproduced with commentary by Henry Ellsworth Wood from a notebook kept by his father, William Cowper Wood, during the 1868 John Wesley Powell expedition. The collection contains one assay book kept by Maurice Hayes between the years 1873 and 1878. Maurice Hayes arrived at Leadville no later than 1873, serving as one of the first assayers in the area and many early Leadville notables are entered in this record book. There are also several scrapbooks and photograph albums, approximately 1868 to approximately 1921.