[Copy of a letter from Mehetabel Preble to her son Stephen Sewall], 1768 January 23

Handwritten copy of a January 23, 1768 letter from Mehetabel Preble to her son Stephen Sewall transcribed by Sewall. The bottom of the page is cut off and some text is missing. In the letter, Preble mentions Sewall's news of the birth of her granddaughter, the death of one of her sons, and discusses her health and approaching death, and the absence of God's "divine light." The item includes the note: "NB. The above letter was rec'd 18th March, 1768. My mother died the 4th day of the same month," and an extract from a February 29, 1768 letter from "Brother Crosby" regarding Preble's illness and anticipation of death.

Commonplace book of Hector Orr, 1789-1804

Hector Orr began recording entries in this commonplace book during his first year as a student at Harvard and continued writing in the volume sporadically until 1804. The entries written while he was a student, from 1789 to 1792, include themes written on the following topics: Time, Discontent, Patriotism, Virtue, Conscience, Patience, Avarice, Compassion, Mortality, Self-knowledge, Benevolence, Morning, Anger, Profanity, Bribery, Autumn and Winter, Hermitage, Conscience and Anticipation. He also wrote detailed entries about the forensic disputations in which he and his classmates participated, explaining both the affirmative and negative positions. One of these disputations involved discussion of the Stamp Act, which was then quite recent history. Orr's entries about the disputations list the names of students involved and specify their position in the argument.