Ohio History Journal

542       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

Mr. Simpson has had three able assistants, physically strong

and industrious, who have done much of the heavy work involved

in moving the newspaper files and keeping them in order, with

no expense to the Society except that in furnishing to each of

these workers one meal a day. He has gotten along harmoniously

and pleasantly with these assistants and from this source has suc-

ceeded in getting a service that would have cost the Society thou-

sands of dollars.

And right here permit us to say, thanks for this service are

due to Warden P. E. Thomas. He has certainly sent us the best

of his men whose generous response to every word and act of

fairness and kindness has been most gratifying.

Your Secretary could not let this opportunity pass to pay

this modest tribute to the valuable service of Mr. Simpson, and

his whole-hearted interest in the work.

Something must be said also in appreciation of the service

of the cataloguer, Miss Alice S. Davis. Not only has she been

diligent in the work but she has conducted much important genea-

logical research, the results of which have greatly pleased many

of the patrons of the library. Her equipment for this work is of

a high order. She is also an excellent proof-reader and your

secretary is dependent upon her assistance in the publications of

our Society, including the indexing of all the annual volumes of

the Quarterly.

Many of the books in the library of Dr. William C. Mills

were duplicates of those already in the Library. His daughter,

Miss Helen Mills, before her present illness, prepared and sent

through the mails to other libraries a list of about three hundred

of these duplicates with a letter soliciting an exchange. As a re-

sult, a number of books needed here were added to the Library.

Among those received was one volume priced by the publisher at

$50.00. This was one of the very rare issues of Western Travels,

edited by Thwaites, which fills a break in our set.

RARE MANUSCRIPTS ADDED

Some notable additions have been made to the manuscript

department within the past year. Especially notable are the fol-

lowing:

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Report of the Forty-fifth Annual Meeting             543

 

Joshua R. Giddings Collection

1. From Mrs. Fred A. Williams, of Ashtabula, Ohio, a gift has been

received of five volumes of mounted letters; 1 file of miscellaneous

letters; 1 package of annotated letters.

Two volumes of Diary 1838-1839, 1848-1849 and one congressional

album. These are all manuscript letters and papers of Joshua R.

Giddings and constitute the only important collection of Giddings

papers in existence.

2. A loan by Albert G. Giddings of Jefferson, Osio, of seven scrap-

books collected by Joshua R. Giddings. These added to a similar

scrap-book already in the library, throw much light on the issues

and activities to which Joshua R. Giddings devoted his energies

through his remarkably active career.

3. Loaned by Albert G. Giddings of Jefferson, Ohio. One silver serv-

ice and glass case for same; 3 souvenir canes, 2 oil paintings of

Joshua R. Giddings; 1 plaster bust of Joshua R. Giddings by J. Q.

A. Ward; 1 congressional chair; 1 parchment roll in metal case,

appreciative of his services as consul to Montreal, Canada.

These valuable Giddings items were secured through the

service of Prof. Harlow Lindley, through whose efforts were

procured also a complete set of the printed minutes of the Indiana

Yearly Meeting of Friends, 1821-1923, including a large member-

ship from Ohio.

From the Collection of Dr. Charles E. Rice

Your Secretary for a number of years has been personally

acquainted with Dr. Charles E. Rice, a manuscript collector,

writer and traveler, of Alliance, Ohio. While an enthusiast in

collecting manuscripts for the past forty years, Dr. Rice has been

indifferent to fame and has not advertised the large results of his

labors which include the bringing together of interesting Ohio

materials. It was through your Secretary that Governor James

E. Campbell and Dr. Rice were brought into pleasant correspond-

ence which resulted in substantial additions to the Campbell col-

lection, which some of his heirs wished to transfer to this Society.

Less than a year ago, Dr. Rice intimated to me that he was

thinking of distributing his large collection. After some corre-

spondence he proposed at a very reasonable price to transfer a

portion of these to our Library. The result was that five volumes

of these are now the property of the library of the Society. All

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544         Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

 

of these are properly designated as strictly Ohio material. They

are as follows:

1. Letters and signatures of all the members of the Ohio Constitu-

tional Convention of 1802. This collection contains autograph let-

ters from all the members of that Convention except three.  The

signatures of these three are included with documents that they

signed. There are biographical sketches of each of the members;

photographs from paintings of fifteen of the thirty-five; and letters

to the collector, chiefly from descendants of the members, attesting

the genuineness of many of the manuscripts and their sources.

2. Autograph letters, portraits of the members of the Supreme Court

of Ohio and the Northwest Territory from 1787 to 1851, when the

new Constitution went into effect.

3. Autograph letters, portraits and biographical sketches of all the

members of the Supreme Court of Ohio from 1851 to 1913.

4. Autograph letters, portraits and biographical sketches of all the

governors of the State.

5. Autograph letters and biographical sketches of all the United States

Senators from Ohio and portraits of almost all of them.

Soon after the arrival of these, seven additional volumes were

acquired, all carefully mounted.

6-12. Autograph letters with signature of persons prominent officially

or otherwise in the different periods of Ohio History.

These twelve incomparable volumes of autograph letters

rank especially high in the manuscript collection of the Society.

The statement may be added here, that Dr. Rice who, the past

winter has been making another journey around the world, inti-

mated before he left that he was considering the transfer of his

large collection of autograph letters from prominent literary men

and women of the United States as a free gift to the library of

this Society.

Journal of the Northwest Territory

Presented by John H. James

The most notable addition to the manuscript department

within the year and the one that has received the widest publicity

is the Executive Journal of the Northwest Territory. An accu-

rate statement of the scope and character of this unique contribu-

tion from the library of Mr. John H. James of Urbana, Ohio,

was published in Museum Echoes for February, 1931, and a copy

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Report of the Forty-Fifth Annual Meeting              545

 

from that statement is here included for permanent record in the

Minutes of the Society. It reads as follows:

For years an effort has been made to complete the official record of the

Northwest Territory. In this volume which has been preserved by the

James family the record is absolutely complete. The first entry bears the

date of July 9, 1788, the day on which Winthrop Sargent arrived at Fort

Harmar. The first important record noted by the Secretary is the speech

made by Governor Arthur St. Clair on the 15th day of that month. This

is given in full.

The dates following, record the important transactions of the govern-

ment through the entire succeeding period to the 15th day of January, 1803.

The last record enumerates appointments that were made on this date.

It was customary, as evidenced in this record, at stated periods to

make a transcript of the record and forward it to Washington, D. C. On one

of the pages we have this notation:

Copy of this journal to the first day of January, 1795

has been transmitted to the President of the United States.

Another instance near the close of the record bears testimony to the

fact that this order had been maintained throughout the period. It reads

as follows:

The Secretary transmitted to the Department of State a

copy of the official proceedings of the governors of the

Territory from the 16th of October 1799 to the 1st of

July, 1800.

It was, therefore, thought that a complete record of the proceedings

had been filed in Washington. Unfortunately, however, about half of that

record disappeared years ago.

When William Henry Smith was editing the St. Clair papers for pub-

lication, he employed a clerk in Washington to make a copy of the record

of the proceedings of the Northwest Territory. This copy was attested on

the 10th day of June 1873, by Hamilton Fish, Secretary of State. At the

conclusion of this copied report appears this significant statement:

No records of the government of the territory northwest

of the Ohio are found in the Department of State of the

United States of a date subsequent to June 1795.

Through all these years research workers have looked in vain for the

record subsequent to June 1795. In this volume, which has now been brought

to light, the complete record is found. It is remarkably well preserved and

every word is perfectly legible.

As students of early Ohio history know, there were three men who held

the office of Secretary of the Northwest Territory. The first of these was

Vol. XL--35.

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546         Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

 

Winthrop Sargent, a soldier of the Revolution, with an excellent military

record, a graduate of Yale college. The Sargent family was eminent in

the colonial history of America and has fully sustained that eminence

through succeeding generations. Winthrop Sargent was Secretary of the

Northwest Territory from July 9, 1788, to May 31, 1798, when he resigned

to become Governor of the Mississippi Territory.

On the 28th of June, 1798, the President of the United States appointed

William Henry Harrison, Secretary of the Northwest Territory. His record

in this old volume begins with that date and continues until October 1, 1799.

This is the last date in the record of Harrison, though he probably continued

in office until the appointment of his successor.

The record kept by Harrison's successor contains the following as its

first item:

The executive of the United States on the 31st day of

December in the year 1799 appointed Charles Willing Byrd

secretary of, in, to, and for the Territory of the United

States northwest of the River Ohio.

When Ohio was admitted into the Union, Charles Willing Byrd be-

came the first judge of the federal district of Ohio.

The foregoing is a brief description of this old record. Illustrative of

the use which has already been made of it is a request from a member of

the Supreme Court of Michigan for a list of officers appointed by the gov-

ernors of the Northwest Territory for the county of Wayne, which in-

cluded Michigan before it became a part of Indiana Territory. The names

of the officers which he wished to get were included between the years 1776

and 1800. They were in the portion of the record that had been missing for

perhaps over a hundred years. The reference librarian in the Museum and

Library Building has copied about two hundred names to send in response

to this request. They could not have been found in any other record.

It will be noticed that we have used the term "governors of the North-

west Territory." In the absence of the governor, the secretary of the Ter-

ritory acted as governor. A large proportion of Winthrop Sargent's service

was in the position of acting governor in the absence of St. Clair. Harrison

and Byrd also at times acted in this capacity.

 

Prominent mention of the discovery of this item and its

transfer to the Society was made in the Columbus Evening Dis-

patch of January 22, 1931, and the news was promptly carried to

all parts of the United States. Within a few days after this pub-

lication, clippings of telegraphic reports of varied length were re-

ceived from papers published on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts

and from the Lakes to the Gulf. More recently proposals to

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Report of the Forty-Fifth Annual Meeting      547

publish this record complete have come to the Secretary from

reputable publishing houses.

The special value of this item lies in the fact that until it was

found there was no record anywhere of the proceedings of the

Northwest Territory from June 20, 1795 to March 1, 1803. It is

now possible to complete the record. There has been in the

library here a copy of the record up to and including June 20,

1795. The Secretary plans to have the remainder of the record

typewritten in the very near future and added to the record pre-

viously in the library. This will make two complete copies that

will be in safe-keeping until the Executive Journal of the Terri-

tory Northwest of the Ohio River is available in printed form.

This Journal covers 535 pages of legible written manuscript,

the major portion of which is in the handwriting of Winthrop

Sargent. With the 1,070 Sargent manuscripts that were pre-

viously in the possession of the library through the kindness of

Winthrop Sargent VI of Philadelphia, the collection of letters

and documents relating to the early history of the Northwest Ter-

ritory now in the possession of the library is unsurpassed in im-

portance. The St. Clair Papers, edited and published years ago

by the State, have been available for years, but the Sargent

Papers, equally important, were not available until collected by

this Society.

The Executive Journal of the Northwest Territory is the

first volume of a number of journals now in the possession of

the library. There is here also the first volume of the Executive

Journals of the Governors of the State. All of these in time

should be published. They include the record from day to day

of the executive departments from the beginning of constitutional

government in Marietta from the year 1788 down to the present

time. All official appointments, including militia and civil officers,

all proclamations and other executive details of interest are

recorded therein. The genealogists and the historians may find

in these records items of interest and importance.

I congratulate this Society on becoming the custodian of these

valuable original source materials with an ever widening prospect

of valuable additions to the same.

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548       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

 

The law creating the Ohio Revolutionary Memorial Commis-

sion made the Director and the Secretary members of that com-

mission. The latter was made also secretary of that commission.

He kept the minutes of some of the earlier and the later meetings

of that commission. He passed final judgment on the text of the

seventy-three major markers erected in the western part of the

State. This sometimes was not an easy job, especially when there

were local disputes in regard to the historical facts and the spell-

ing of names. However, the work was satisfactorily concluded

after a somewhat voluminous correspondence which is on file

here and eloquently attests the fact that while there was but one

meeting of our Board of Trustees, the pen of your Secretary has

been kept rather warm within the past year.

It becomes our sad duty to record the decease of a member

of the staff of the Society, Prof. James S. Hine, who passed away

after a very brief illness, December 22, 1930; and the very recent

death of Edwin F. Wood, our worthy and faithful Treasurer and

for forty years a trustee of the Society. These two friends and

co-workers are sadly missed and long the vacancies that they left

behind will be felt in this Society.

In concluding this report I wish to thank the members of

the Board of Trustees for kindly counsel and assistance, the

patrons of the library for words and letters of appreciation, and

the assistants in my department without exception, from the as-

sistant librarian, the cataloger and the librarian of the newspaper

department, to the student help for faithful and efficient service

and kindly cooperation in all the work that comes to the Secretary

and Librarian of this Society.

On motion of Mr. Hinkle the meeting adjourned until

April 30 to consider whatever business may come up on

that day.

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