Town law journals from Concord, Mass., 1798-1839

Seven manuscript journals written by Abiel Heywood (Justice of the Peace, town clerk, and chairman of the board of selectmen, Concord, Mass.), Nathan Brooks, William Parkman, and John L. Tuttle containing criminal records, defaulted cases, and civil actions.

Receipt book for legal services, 1798-1810

A receipt book containing fees charged for legal services of John Rowe who practiced in Gloucester, Massachusetts.

Receipts, 1798, 1799, 1809

Handwritten receipts for fees and debts collected.

Letters and legal opinion, 1798-1823

Legal opinion on an equity case (1798). Four letters to an unnamed correspondent (1801) regarding a shipment of papers; Joseph Hopkinson, member of Congress (1817) regarding a judiciary bill; a note (1818) to the cashier of the Bank of Columbia; and to Charles T. Mercer (1823) regarding property in Loudoun County, Virginia. Folder also contains newspaper clippings (ca. 1830-1842) regarding Washington's life and career, including one taken from the Journal of Law.

Diary and commonplace book of Peres Fobes, 1759-1760

The diary and commonplace book of Perez Fobes is written on unlined pages in a notebook with a sewn binding at the top of the pages; only the edge of the original leather softcover remain. The volume holds handwritten entries added irregularly from August 23, 1759 until December 1760 while Fobes was a student at Harvard College. The topics range from the irreverent, to the mundane, to the theological and scientific. The notebook serves to chronicle both his daily activities, such as books he read, lectures he attended, and travel, as well as a place to note humorous sayings, transcribe book passages, or ponder religious ideas such as original sin. In the volume, Fobes devotes considerable space to the subject of astronomy, and drew a picture of the "The Solar System Serundum Coper[nici] with the Or[bit] of 5 Remarkable Comets." At the back of the book, on unattached pages is a short personal dictionary for the letters A-K kept by Fobes.

Clerk's Book, A.D. 1742

Handwritten volume containing the Articles, weekly orations, and clerk's journal for the Harvard Latin Society recorded by the club's clerk, Jonathan Mayhew (Harvard AB 1744). The Articles define the Society's mission as to "improve ourselves in the knowledge of the Latin Tongue." The ten articles are signed to by ten members of the classes of 1743 and 1744. The journal which records the weekly meetings from April 14, 1742 through June 17, 1742 includes a transcription of the weekly oration in Latin; the first two entries are also translated into English. On the last page of the book, the "clerk's journal" provides a summary of each meeting with the date, the moderator, and the orators.

Diploma of Cornelius Coolidge, AB, 1798

Handwritten diploma with the Harvard University seal conferring a bachelor's degree on Cornelius Coolidge and signed by the members of the Harvard Corporation: President Joseph Willard; Fellows Oliver Wendell, John Lowell, James Bowdoin, Simeon Howard, and John Lathrop; and Treasurer Ebenezer Storer.

Student lecture notes of Benjamin Peirce, 1797-1798

This collection contains approximately twenty-three handwritten lecture summaries on six leaves made by Harvard undergraduate Benjamin Peirce between September 1797 and November 22, 1798. The summaries generally provide a few sentences describing the topic covered and primarily pertain to lectures on English grammar delivered by Eliphalet Pearson, the Hollis Professor of Hebrew and other Oriental Languages. There are also summaries for single lectures by David Tappan, the Hollis Professor Divinity; Samuel Webber, the Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy; and John Snelling Popkin, the Greek Tutor from 1795 to 1798, and later the Eliot Professor of Greek Literature. There is also an undated summary of a lecture by Benjamin Waterhouse, the Hersey Professor of Theory and Practice of Physic.