Payment order for Daniel Parker on behalf of his son, 1783 July 10

Handwritten order to John Sale to pay scholarship funds to Daniel Parker for use by his son, signed by Charles Chauncey, John Clarke, Jonathan Williams, James Thwing, and Jacob Williams.

Payment order for Thomas Adams, 1785 June 30

Handwritten order to John Sale to pay scholarship funds to student Thomas Adams (Harvard AB 1788), signed by signed by Charles Chauncey, John Clarke, Jonathan Williams, and James Thwing.

Payment order for Ephraim Eliot on behalf of Thomas Adams, 1786 June 28

Handwritten order to John Sale to pay the bearer the specified amount signed by Charles Chauncey, John Clarke, Jonathan Williams, and James Thwing. The verso is signed by Ephraim Eliot on behalf of student Thomas Adams (Harvard AB 1788).

Letter from Thomas Crafts to Edward Wigglesworth, 1781 May 22

This brief letter from Thomas Crafts (1759-1819; Harvard AB 1783) to Professor Wigglesworth concerns Craft's work on the catalogue of pamphlets in the library.

Student essay composed by Thomas Mason, 1796

Three-page folio-sized handwritten student essay composed by Thomas Mason as a Harvard undergraduate. The verso of the last page is inscribed "Mason February 1796." A quotation from Edward Young appears at the top of the first page: "Heaven gives us friends to bless the present science; / Resumes them, to prepare us for the rest." The essay discusses friendship and the death of friends, and begins, "The author of our nature has so constituted it, that pleasure is unknown without the intervention of pain."

Letter from William Tudor to Thomas Handasyd Perkins,

One letter in which Tudor writes of his relief at the acquittal of his brother-in-law Charles Stewart at a court martial. He also discusses speculation and trade, his shares in silver mines at Bella Vista and Chanca, Peru, and the political climate. He additionally references his role in planning the monument at Bunker Hill in Charlestown, writing, "I had something to do in originating and preparing the way for the Bunker Hill monunument, a truly patriotic object, which I believed was a proper way to excite public enthusiasm."

Letter from Thomas Giraud to William Tudor,

One letter mentioning the French ambassador to Naples, Charles Jean-Marie Alquier. In French.

Response to remarks by Charles Mordaunt on United States trade with England,

"Lines occasioned by the assertion of Sir Charles Mordaunt in debate, that the Americans could not catch a mouse or shave themselves without having recourse to Birmingham." Undated, unsigned poem, likely by Tudor, in response to remarks made by Mordaunt during a debate on the Orders in Council in the English Parliament.

[Letter from Andrew Eliot to "My Dear Sir," 14 September 1774]

Two-page letter to an unknown recipient discussing the effects of the Revolutionary War on Boston ("at present it's situation is melancholy"). The letter acknowledges the work of the Continental Congress and that its decisions "will be Law to America," and thanks the "munificence of our Friends in the Southern Colonies." In local news, Eliot mentions that Dr. Samuel Langdon will likely be appointed Harvard's next President, and notes the death of Thomas Hollis, a Harvard benefactor.

Letter from James Winthrop to William Bentley, 1783 November 20

Two octavo-sized leaves containing a two-page handwritten letter from Winthrop to Bentley discussing the "trials of the Regicides" during the reign of King Charles II.

The invention of letters annotated by Charles Pinckney Sumner, ca. 1795-1796

Interleaved second-edition copy of Robert Treat Paine's poem "The Invention of Letters" with handwritten excerpts of 18th century poetry copied by Charles Pinckney Sumner. The excerpts appear to be verses alluded to, or emulated, by Paine in the poem. For example, Paine's verse includes "Beneath the shade, which Freedom's oak displays" and Sumner on the opposite page quoted Alexander Pope's poetry, "Beneath the shade a spreading beech displays." The excerpts include poetry by Alexander Pope, James Thompson, Robert Dodsley, William Falconer, William Hayley, Samuel Rogers, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Thomas Gray, and John Denham.

John Warren's copy of votes from a meeting of the Boston Medical Society, 1784 May 3

This document lists the eleven votes cast at a meeting of the Boston Medical Society on May 3, 1784. It was authorized as a "true coppy" by Thomas Kast, the Secretary of the Society. The following members of the Society were present at the meeting, all of them doctors: James Pecker, James Lloyd, Joseph Gardner, Samuel Danforth, Isaac Rand, Jr., Charles Jarvis, Thomas Kast, Benjamin Curtis, Thomas Welsh, Nathaniel Walker Appleton, and doctors whose last names were Adams, Townsend, Eustis, Homans, and Whitwell. The document indicates that a meeting had been held the previous evening, as well (May 2, 1784), at which the topics on which votes were taken had been discussed. The votes, eleven in total, were all related to the doctors' concerns about John Warren and his involvement with the emerging medical school (now Harvard Medical School), that school's relation to almshouses, the medical care of the poor, and other related matters. The tone and content of these votes reveals anger on the part of the members of the Boston Medical Society towards Warren. This anger appears to have stemmed from the perceived threat of Warren to their own practices, exacerbated by a vote of the Harvard Corporation on April 19, 1784. This vote authorized Warren to apply to the Overseers of the Poor for the town of Boston, requesting that students in the newly-established Harvard medical program, where Warren was Professor of Anatomy and Surgery, be allowed to visit the hospital of the almshouse with their professors for the purpose of clinical instruction. Although Warren believed that the students would learn far more from these visits, in regards to surgical experience, than they could possibly learn in Cambridge, the proposal provoked great distrust from the members of the Boston Medical Society, who accused Warren of an "attempt to direct the public medical business from its usual channels" for his own financial and professional gain.

Relation de la conversion de Mr. Jean Thayer: autrefois ministre protestant à Boston, en l'Amérique Septentrionale, converti à la religion catholique à Rome, le 25 de mai 1783 et prêtre depuis la Trinité 1787 / manuscript, [after 1788]

écrite par lui-même en 1788 :