Cat­a­loging is now avail­able online for the entire col­lec­tion of the nearly 2200 man­u­scripts com­pris­ing the New Series of Islamic Man­u­scripts in the Man­u­scripts Divi­sion, Depart­ment of Rare Books and Spe­cial Col­lec­tions, Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Library. The New Series con­sti­tutes the pre­mier col­lec­tion of pre­dom­i­nantly Shi‘ite man­u­scripts in the West­ern Hemi­sphere and among the finest in the world. The online records have been cre­ated as part of the Islamic Man­u­scripts Cat­a­loging and Dig­i­ti­za­tion Project, to improve access to these rich col­lec­tions and share them world­wide through dig­i­tal tech­nol­ogy. Gen­er­ous sup­port from the David A. Gard­ner ’69 Magic Project has funded this ongo­ing effort. Researchers can now locate Ara­bic, Per­sian, and Ottoman Turk­ish man­u­scripts by search­ing the Library’s online cat­a­log.

Over the past two years, the Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Library has cre­ated online biblio­graphic records cov­er­ing over 800 Per­sian and Ottoman Turk­ish man­u­scripts in the New Series. Most of these had pre­vi­ously been described only in abbre­vi­ated for­mat in the Pre­lim­i­nary Check­list of Uncat­a­loged Islamic Man­u­scripts in the Depart­ment of Rare Books and Spe­cial Col­lec­tions, Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Library, while approx­i­mately 200 of them were com­pletely undoc­u­mented. Each man­u­script was given a full cat­a­log record that includes an autho­rized name, title and title vari­a­tions where appro­pri­ate, dat­ing in both Hijri and Gre­go­rian for­mats, incipit, phys­i­cal descrip­tion of the entire man­u­script, descrip­tion of the text, ref­er­ences, and appro­pri­ate sub­ject headings.

The newly cat­a­loged man­u­scripts largely reflect the core top­i­cal focus of the New Series, namely the rich intel­lec­tual and spir­i­tual tra­di­tion of Shi‘ite Islam. In Per­sian this tra­di­tion is rep­re­sented mainly by works on doc­trine, prayer, and the lives of the Imams, com­posed after the rise of the Safavids down to the early 20^th cen­tury. Note­wor­thy are three man­u­scripts pur­port­ing to be in the hand­writ­ing of the pro­lific Muham­mad Baqir al-Majlisi: ‘Ayn al-hayat (no. 775), Zad al-ma‘ad (no. 1495), and Ziyarat-i ‘Ashura (no. 1450). Of the more unusual man­u­scripts are two vol­umes of a four-volume work on doc­trine, likely Shaykhi, the Bah­jat al-arwah by Nasir al-Islam, an auto­graph man­u­script writ­ten in the 1920s (no. 190 and no. 470); as well as the sec­ond vol­ume of Bahr al-masa’ib by Muham­mad Riza Parvin, an auto­graph man­u­script dated 1862 which recounts the mar­tyr­doms of the Prophet’s fam­ily (no. 471).

New Series also con­tains numer­ous col­lec­tions of poetry by both famous and lesser known poets in Per­sian. The entire works of Tughra-yi Mash­hadi are col­lected in a two-volume man­u­script dated 1696 (no. 372–373), and there is an auto­graph col­lec­tion of the poems of Musahibi Na’ini, writ­ten in 1893–1902 (no. 132). While there is ample rep­re­sen­ta­tion of poets hail­ing from Per­sia, there are also man­u­scripts of Per­sian poetry by Indian poets, such as Ghan­i­mat (no. 2065) and Ghaws (no. 2068). Also worth men­tion­ing is the small col­lec­tion of Ottoman Turk­ish poetry, which includes the Tale of Seyfülmülûk by an unknown author (no. 1558).

While the bulk of the series is com­prised of Shi‘ite works and Per­sian poetry, there are sub­stan­tial hold­ings in med­i­cine, his­tory, gram­mar, lex­i­col­ogy, astron­omy, astrol­ogy, occultism, Sufism, and Sunni law. For exam­ple, Bek­tashi Sufi doc­trine and prac­tice is addressed by a col­lec­tion of Ottoman Turk­ish texts which includes the Fakr­name attrib­uted to Ja‘far al-Sadiq (no. 2043), and in Per­sian of Indian ori­gin are sev­eral com­men­taries by Par­vanah Shah on the Siraj-i anjan, a Sufi trea­tise writ­ten by Muḥammad Siraj Allah and ‘Abd Siraj al-Raḥman (no. 1794, no. 1812, and no. 1853). The tra­di­tion of illu­mi­na­tion is well-attested in the series, a strik­ing exam­ple being a richly illu­mi­nated copy of the Mi’at kalimah with inter­lin­ear Per­sian trans­la­tion (no. 710). Addi­tion­ally, a few man­u­scripts con­tain minia­tures, such as Layla va Maj­nun by Hat­ifi (no. 1585) and a Per­sian trans­la­tion of the Ramayana (no. 1751).

For more infor­ma­tion about the cat­a­loging, con­tact Denise L. Soufi, Islamic Man­u­scripts Cat­a­loger, at ; for information about the overall project, contact Don C. Skemer, Curator of Manuscripts, at .

Ali ibn Abi Talib, Mi’at kalimah, 15--?, fol. 1b-2a (no. 710). Not to be reproduced without permission of the Princeton University Library.

Muhammad Baqir al-Majlisi, Zad al-ma`ad, 1696, fol. 199b (no. 1495). Not to be reproduced without permission of the Princeton University Library.

It is April 15, “Tax Day,” and in the spirit of tax days past and present, we can look at a group of extra­or­di­nary doc­u­ments relat­ing to the 1798 Direct Fed­eral Tax in the recently reprocessed and expanded Ebenezer Foote Papers (C0430), Man­u­scripts Divi­sion, Depart­ment of Rare books and Spe­cial Collections.

Ebenezer Foote (1756–1829), born in Con­necti­cut, fought in the Con­ti­nen­tal Army dur­ing the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion. He was at the Bat­tle of Bunker Hill, win­tered at Val­ley Forge, and was taken pris­oner dur­ing the dis­as­trous Bat­tle of Fort Wash­ing­ton.  In Decem­ber 1777 he escaped from Bridewell Prison in New York City by swim­ming across the Hud­son River to New Jer­sey.  It is not sur­pris­ing that his health suf­fered from this event, but desir­ing to con­tinue serv­ing his coun­try, he became an inspec­tor of cat­tle in the Con­ti­nen­tal  Army’s Com­mis­sary Depart­ment, mov­ing cat­tle from the coun­try­side to West Point so that the beef could be dis­trib­uted to some­times starv­ing troops.

After the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion, Foote was given land in Delhi, New York, as par­tial com­pen­sa­tion for his mil­i­tary ser­vice.  Soon after, Delaware County, in which Delhi was located, was formed and Foote became an influ­en­tial cit­i­zen there, as politi­cian, county clerk, land agent, and judge.  In 1798 he was assigned to be prin­ci­pal asses­sor of the first assess­ment dis­trict in the eighth divi­sion of the state of New York for the 1798 Direct Fed­eral Tax.

The 1798 Direct Fed­eral Tax resulted from the Quasi-War with France and the United States’ need to develop its mil­i­tary.  Thus, Con­gress placed into effect a two mil­lion dol­lar direct tax for prop­erty (and that includes slaves) for the six­teen states in the United States.  Foote and other asses­sors all across the new nation trav­eled through­out their dis­tricts assess­ing the dwelling houses, land, and slaves, and record­ing their infor­ma­tion on eleven forms.

Among the most inter­est­ing items in the Ebenezer Foote Papers are these eleven forms, in vary­ing degrees of com­plete­ness.  These are clearly not the offi­cial records sub­mit­ted to the pres­i­den­tially appointed Board of Com­mis­sion­ers, but since those records were not sys­tem­at­i­cally col­lected or pre­served, these may be the only such records for Delhi, New York.  In fact, accord­ing to the National Archives, only a few of the enor­mous num­ber of offi­cial assess­ments are located and avail­able for research.

Included among these assess­ments in the Ebenezer Foote Papers are the “Par­tic­u­lar List or Descrip­tion of each Dwelling-house,” the “Par­tic­u­lar List or Descrip­tion of all Lands, Lots, Build­ings, and Wharves, owned, pos­sessed, or occu­pied,” and the “Par­tic­u­lar List of Slaves, owned or super­in­tended.”  The houses are described best, with name of occu­pant, owner, sit­u­a­tion, dimen­sions, win­dows, mate­ri­als, quan­tity of land, age and state of repair of struc­ture, and val­u­a­tion of the prop­erty.  It is the slave lists, how­ever, that are most dis­turb­ing. The names of the slaves are not recorded. We are only told who owned and super­in­tended them, the town in which they were employed, the num­ber of and gen­ders of slaves owned, and, most impor­tant, the num­ber of slaves above the age of 12 and under the age of 50 who were sub­ject to tax­a­tion.  Slave own­ers were taxed fifty cents for each slave between the ages of 12 and 50 who was not pre­cluded from work­ing as a result of per­ma­nent ill­ness or dis­abil­ity.  The assess­ments reveal that five of the thir­teen slaves within the first assess­ment dis­trict of the eighth divi­sion of New York­were sub­ject to taxation.

Along with these tax doc­u­ments, the Ebenezer Foote Papers is filled with offi­cial cor­re­spon­dence and busi­ness, legal, and finan­cial records, which shed light on life the Early National Period.  For infor­ma­tion about using these or any other col­lec­tions in research, con­tact

The Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Library is pleased to announce the long-awaited pub­li­ca­tion of its two-volume cat­a­logue, Medieval and Renais­sance Man­u­scripts in the Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Library, by Don C. Ske­mer; incor­po­rat­ing con­tri­bu­tions by Ade­laide Ben­nett, Jean F. Pre­ston, William P. Stone­man and the Index of Chris­t­ian Art (Prince­ton, N.J.: Depart­ment of Art and Archae­ol­ogy and the Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Library, in asso­ci­a­tion with Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Press, 2013), vol. I: xxv, 483 pages, 88 pages of plates; vol. II: xix, 558 pages, 40 pages of plates): color illus­tra­tions; 30 cm. The cat­a­logue is avail­able from Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Press. This illus­trated cat­a­logue, with nearly 400 color illus­tra­tions, pro­vides full tex­tual and cod­i­co­log­i­cal descrip­tions of upwards of 450 medieval and Renais­sance man­u­scripts in the Depart­ment of Rare Books and Spe­cial Col­lec­tions. Most of the man­u­scripts are in the Man­u­scripts Divi­sion, in the Robert Gar­rett (Class of 1897), Grenville Kane, Robert Tay­lor (Class of 1930), and Prince­ton series. Also found in these col­lec­tions are more than 250 sep­a­rate minia­tures, leaves, and cut­tings. The cat­a­logue also cov­ers a num­ber of man­u­scripts in the Cot­sen Children’s Library, the gift of Lloyd E. Cot­sen (Class of 1950); and a small num­ber of other man­u­scripts in other man­u­script series or bound with printed books.

The Library has one of the finest col­lec­tions of medieval and Renais­sance man­u­scripts in North Amer­ica, chiefly in the Man­u­scripts Divi­sion, but com­ple­mented by the hold­ings of the Scheide Library. The man­u­scripts range in date from the 8^th to 16^th cen­turies. About a third of the man­u­scripts in the cat­a­logue are illu­mi­nated or illus­trated. While Latin texts are pre­dom­i­nant, Prince­ton has excel­lent hold­ings of ver­nac­u­lar man­u­scripts in Mid­dle Eng­lish, as well as in French, Ital­ian, Span­ish, Ger­man, Dutch or Flem­ish, and other lan­guages. Byzan­tine and post-Byzantine Greek man­u­scripts are described in a sep­a­rate cat­a­logue, Greek Man­u­scripts at Prince­ton, Sixth to Nine­teenth Cen­tury: A Descrip­tive Cat­a­logue, by Sofia Kotz­abassi and Nancy Pat­ter­son Ševčenko; with the col­lab­o­ra­tion of Don C. Ske­mer (Prince­ton, N.J.: Depart­ment of Art and Archae­ol­ogy and Pro­gram in Hel­lenic Stud­ies, Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity, in asso­ci­a­tion with Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Press, 2010), xxix, 304 p., [174] p. of plates of color and black-and-white plates; 31 cm. This cat­a­log cov­ers the hold­ings of the Man­u­scripts Divi­sion, The Scheide Library, the Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Art Museum, and the Prince­ton The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary. It is also avail­able from Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Press.

Pub­li­ca­tion of the new cat­a­logue will be cel­e­brated in an inter­na­tional con­fer­ence orga­nized by the Index of Chris­t­ian Art: “Man­u­scripta Illu­mi­nata: Approaches to Under­stand­ing Medieval and Renais­sance Man­u­scripts.” The con­fer­ence will be held at Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity on Octo­ber 25–26, 2013. For infor­ma­tion about the con­fer­ence and its speak­ers, go to http://ica.princeton.edu/conference.php.

For infor­ma­tion about Prince­ton man­u­scripts, con­tact Don C. Ske­mer, Cura­tor of Man­u­scripts, at .

Jean de Meun as author. Gar­rett Ms. 126, fol. 29v. Gift of Robert Gar­rett, Class of 1897. Not to be repro­duced with­out per­mis­sion of the Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Library.

St. Luke paint­ing the Vir­gin Mary. Prince­ton Ms. 87, fol. 17r. Gift of Edna Reed, from the col­lec­tion of David Aiken Reed, Class of 1900. Not to be repro­duced with­out per­mis­sion of the Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Library.

“In the full­ness of time,” declared the Amer­i­can his­to­rian George Ban­croft in 1866, sum­ma­riz­ing the nation’s pre­vi­ous 250 years, “a repub­lic rose up in the wilder­ness of Amer­ica.” The cur­rent exhi­bi­tion in the Main Gallery at Fire­stone Library, “A Repub­lic in the Wilder­ness: Trea­sures of Amer­i­can His­tory from Jamestown to Appo­mat­tox,” takes its title from Bancroft’s speech. The exhi­bi­tion begins with early Eng­lish set­tle­ment and con­tact with the native peo­ples, and then traces the growth of the Amer­i­can nation to the end of the Civil War, against a back­ground of evolv­ing nat­ural and built envi­ron­ments. The trea­sures on dis­play bear wit­ness to the peo­ple and events that cre­ated an endur­ing polit­i­cal union and shaped the Amer­i­can experience.

On view are some of Princeton’s finest hold­ings of Amer­i­can his­tor­i­cal man­u­scripts, auto­graph let­ters, rare books, maps, broad­sides, prints, pho­tographs, and other orig­i­nal mate­ri­als pre­served in the Depart­ment of Rare Books and Spe­cial Col­lec­tions and the Scheide Library. Among them are William Strachey’s extra-illustrated eye­wit­ness account of the Jamestown Colony, John Eliot’s Indian Bible, George Washington’s land sur­veys, John Trumbull’s final sketch for his paint­ing of the Bat­tle of Prince­ton, Alexan­dre Berthier’s map of Prince­ton in 1783, leaves from Thomas Jefferson’s Farm Book, views of land­scapes and wildlife by John James Audubon and George Catlin, a let­ter by Fred­er­ick Dou­glass on slav­ery, first edi­tions of The Book of Mor­mon and Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Abra­ham Lincoln’s man­u­script draft of a speech on sec­tion­al­ism, and Gen­eral George B. McClellan’s col­lec­tion of Civil War pho­tographs. An accom­pa­ny­ing online exhi­bi­tion, fea­tur­ing selected items on dis­play, is avail­able at http://rbsc.princeton.edu/republic.

This exhi­bi­tion was made pos­si­ble through the gen­eros­ity of Prince­ton alumni and their fam­i­lies, past and present; par­tic­u­larly, the late Mar­garet P. Nut­tle, a descen­dant of Patrick Henry and mother of Philip E. Nut­tle, Jr. (Class of 1963). The Barksdale-Dabney-Henry Fund that she cre­ated sup­ports the impor­tant work of the Depart­ment of Rare Books and Spe­cial Col­lec­tions on doc­u­ment­ing and cel­e­brat­ing early Amer­i­can his­tory. Major Prince­ton col­lec­tors whose gifts of Amer­i­cana are on dis­play include Sin­clair Hamil­ton (Class of 1906), André de Cop­pet (Class of 1915), William H. Scheide (Class of 1936), Lloyd E. Cot­sen (Class of 1950), Leonard L. Mil­berg (Class of 1953), J. Den­nis Delafield (Class of 1957) and Pene­lope John­son, and Sid­ney Lapidus (Class of 1959). The Library thanks William H. Scheide and Paul Need­ham (Scheide Librar­ian) for per­mis­sion to exhibit some of the Scheide Library’s great­est treasures.

The exhi­bi­tion is free and open to the pub­lic, and is on view in the Main Gallery of Fire­stone Library from Feb­ru­ary 22 through August 4, 2013, week­days from 9 am to 4:45 pm, and week­ends from noon to 5 pm.

The Friends of the Library are spon­sor­ing two events in con­junc­tion with the exhi­bi­tion. James McPher­son, the George Henry Davis 1886 Pro­fes­sor of Amer­i­can His­tory, Emer­i­tus, will give a lec­ture on the Civil War at 5:00pm on Wednes­day, March 5, in McCormick Hall Room 101. Sean Wilentz, the George Henry Davis 1886 Pro­fes­sor of Amer­i­can His­tory, will present a lec­ture at 3:30pm on Sun­day, May 5 in McCormick Hall Room 101 to cel­e­brate the offi­cial open­ing of the exhi­bi­tion. Both lec­tures will be fol­lowed by a recep­tion in the Main Gallery at Fire­stone Library. Trea­sures that will be on view spe­cially for these events include Charles Mason’s and Jere­miah Dixon’s 1768 hand-drawn map, and sou­venir copies of the Eman­ci­pa­tion Procla­ma­tion and the Thir­teenth Amend­ment signed by Abra­ham Lincoln.

WILLIAM STRACHEY (1572–1621), “The First Decade Con­teyn­ing the His­to­rie of Trav­ell into Vir­ginia Bri­ta­nia,” 1612. Not to be repro­duced with­out per­mis­sion of the Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Library.

$100,000 Reward! (New York, 1865). Not to be repro­duced with­out per­mis­sion of the Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Library.

The Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Library is pleased to announce the acqui­si­tion of an eighteenth-century scribal score (297 pages) of George Frid­eric Handel’s three-act opera Berenice, copied by a con­tem­po­rary Han­del copy­ist (“S2”) from the composer’s auto­graph man­u­script. The scribal score is com­plete but for Berenice’s aria “Avver­tite mie pupille” and opens with the title page read­ing, “Berenice Opera Com­posta per il Sgr G:F: Han­del / Com­min­ci­ato Decembr: 15 1736.” Handel’s opera seria con­cern­ing the life and loves of Queen Cleopa­tra Berenice of Egypt around 80 B.C.E. was based on an Ital­ian libretto by the Flo­ren­tine poet Anto­nio Salvi, who enti­tled it Berenice, regina d’Egitto. The opera pre­miered at London’s Covent Gar­den in May 1737. The present score was in the library of Charles Jen­nens and bears his shelf­mark. Jen­nens was Handel’s patron and is per­haps best known as the libret­tist of Mes­siah. The score is for voices and orches­tra (strings, oboes, bas­soons, and con­tinuo), with fig­ured bass through­out and a few addi­tional fig­ures added by Charles Jen­nens. The com­plete man­u­script can be viewed online here.

The man­u­script will com­ple­ment the Library’s James S. Hall Col­lec­tion of George Frid­eric Han­del, in the Depart­ment of Rare Books and Spe­cial Col­lec­tions. Among eighteenth-century scribal scores in the man­u­scripts por­tion of the Hall-Handel Col­lec­tion (C0640) are those for the ora­to­rios Bels­haz­zar, John Balus, and Joseph, copied in about 1745 by John Christo­pher Smith (the elder) for Fred­er­ick, Prince of Wales.

The Berenice man­u­script, along with sev­eral man­u­scripts and early printed edi­tions from the Hall-Handel Col­lec­tion will be exhib­ited in the Library’s Eighteenth-Century Window. The exhi­bi­tion is free and open to the pub­lic, and is on view from Feb­ru­ary 21 through March 4, week­days from 9 am to 4:45 pm, and week­ends from noon to 5 pm. Addi­tion­ally, Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity will host the Amer­i­can Han­del Society’s bien­nial fes­ti­val from Feb­ru­ary 21 through Feb­ru­ary 23. The 2013 fes­ti­val will fea­ture three con­certs of Handel’s works per­formed by musi­cians affil­i­ated with the Uni­ver­sity, two con­fer­ence events, and the exhi­bi­tion in Fire­stone Library. For more infor­ma­tion about the fes­ti­val, please click here.

Han­del, Berenice. Not to be repro­duced with­out per­mis­sion of the Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Library.

In a let­ter dated Jan­u­ary 19, 1863, Cap­tain Isaac Plumb, Jr., a Civil War sol­dier of the 61^st New York Infantry of the Union Army who fought in many major bat­tles of the war, includ­ing Anti­etam, Fred­er­icks­burg, Chan­cel­lorsville, Get­tys­burg, the Wilder­ness, and Cold Har­bor, wrote, “it may sound very unpa­tri­otic and unsoldier-like in me, but I must express my hon­est opin­ion.”  With those few words, the Plumb Fam­ily Papers become extra­or­di­nar­ily valuable—what researcher does not want the cre­ator of an archival col­lec­tion to tell their own truth rather than what that cre­ator thinks their audi­ence wants to hear?  The col­lec­tion doc­u­ments Cap­tain Plumb’s extended fam­ily and dates from 1767 to 1929, but its par­tic­u­lar strength lies in the let­ters to and from Cap­tain Plumb dur­ing his Civil War ser­vice, just before his enlist­ment in 1861 until his death result­ing from a wound at Cold Har­bor in 1864. He wrote to and received let­ters from his par­ents, brother, uncles, and cousin’s hus­band reg­u­larly, and in those let­ters, all the cor­re­spon­dents, not just Cap­tain Plumb, express their “hon­est opin­ions” about pol­i­tics, philo­soph­i­cal ideas, and their experiences.

From this col­lec­tion, researchers will see how one New York fam­ily felt about the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion of 1860, the South seced­ing from the Union, the start of the Civil War, slav­ery, race rela­tions, and the value of the sac­ri­fices made by both the Union and the Con­fed­er­ate. The Plumbs are keenly patri­otic, and ready to fight for their coun­try to main­tain the Union. How­ever, in vivid detail, Cap­tain Plumb describes his loss of faith in his supe­ri­ors, his real feel­ing about African Amer­i­cans, the ter­ri­ble waste of bat­tle, and an over­all dis­il­lu­sion­ment with the war. He does not pro­tect his fam­ily from the hor­rors of the bat­tle­field, despite the effect his descrip­tions must have had on his fam­ily, wor­ried con­tin­u­ally about his safety. Yet despite their fear of the fate of Cap­tain Plumb, the lives of his fam­ily do go on; and these let­ters of calm amidst the chaos of war are equally illu­mi­nat­ing as those writ­ten from a muddy army camp or a dev­as­tated bat­tle­field.  In these let­ters, researchers see the home front—a land­scape of women and older men; wit­nesses to a chang­ing world; and the stead­fast loy­alty to the Union and the fight to end slav­ery, a sen­ti­ment increas­ingly at odds with that of their fam­ily mem­ber on the battlefield.

Cap­tain Plumb was wounded dur­ing the 1864 Bat­tle of Cold Har­bor with two appar­ently super­fi­cial wounds, but these wounds became life threat­en­ing as infec­tion spread. He had been taken almost imme­di­ately to Camp­bell Hos­pi­tal in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., and he was for­tu­nate to have fam­ily rush to keep him com­pany and send reports home­ward. These let­ters describe the hos­pi­tal, the efforts by the doc­tors and nurses, and the “mood” of Wash­ing­ton, D.C., as well as how Cap­tain Plumb received his wound and how he was recov­er­ing. He died on July 4, 1864, nearly three weeks after receiv­ing his wounds. The col­lec­tion con­tains his wal­let, as well as the con­tents of the wal­let at the time of death. Here, a researcher will see Cap­tain Plumb’s unsteady hand­writ­ing as he requested com­pany at the hos­pi­tal; a sin­gle play­ing card; and telegram tape, folded up into a tiny envelope.

Cap­tain Plumb’s phys­i­cal life may have ended on July 4, but his mem­ory lived on in his fam­ily and they doc­u­ment their love for him by erect­ing mon­u­ments, paint­ing por­traits, and writ­ing about him in let­ters to each other, long after his death. Despite the family’s obvi­ous pain at the time of Cap­tain Plumb’s death, they do not seem to think that he died in vain—their patri­o­tism and belief in the cause is evi­dent for years fol­low­ing the con­clu­sion of the Civil War.

Selected items from the Plumb Fam­ily Papers will be on exhibit in Fire­stone Library’s Main Gallery in Spring 2013. We invite researchers to fol­low these con­ver­sa­tions between a fam­ily from the North who loy­ally sup­ported their gov­ern­ment on the home front and main­tained faith despite the dis­il­lu­sion­ment of their fam­ily mem­ber on the bat­tle­field; and one unique sol­dier who described his expe­ri­ences hon­estly: camp life, bat­tles, polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary phi­los­o­phy, and the hope for the even­tual heal­ing of both sol­diers and the country.

Por­trait of Isaac Plumb, Jr. Not to be repro­duced with­out the per­mis­sion of Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Library.

Ancient Mesopotamian clay tablets with cuneiform writ­ing, dat­ing back over 4,000 years, will on dis­play in the Fire­stone Library’s Eighteenth-Century Win­dow from Octo­ber 2 to 8. Cuneiform writ­ing was a method of incis­ing script into wet clay with a wedge-shaped writ­ing imple­ment. For nearly 3,000 years, the scribes of Mesopotamia mas­tered the ver­ti­cal, hor­i­zon­tal, and oblique strokes nec­es­sary to write words and num­bers in Sumer­ian, Baby­lon­ian, Assyr­ian, and other lan­guages of the ancient Near East. The Man­u­scripts Divi­sion has a sub­stan­tial cuneiform col­lec­tion of approx­i­mately 1,350 baked and unbaked clay tablets and tablet cases, as well as some clay cylin­ders and nail-shaped cones. Most date from the Third Dynasty of Ur (Ur III) or Neo-Sumerian Empire, chiefly in what is now south­ern Iraq. The con­ven­tional date of Ur III, accord­ing to the Mid­dle Chronol­ogy, is 2119–2004 BCE.  Cuneiform was used for all sorts of writ­ing, from lit­er­a­ture, law codes, and math­e­mat­i­cal texts, to account­ing records and eco­nomic doc­u­ments in archives. Most of Princeton’s clay tablets are doc­u­men­tary and were exca­vated over a cen­tury ago from Tel­loh, Jokha, and Drehem (mod­ern place names for the ruins of the ancient Girsu, Uma, and Puzrish-Dagan in South­ern Mesopotamia). The prin­ci­pal donors of these were Moses Tay­lor Pyne, Class of 1877; Pro­fes­sor Rudolph Ernst Brün­now, Depart­ment of Near East­ern Stud­ies; and other friends and alumni of Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity. In addi­tion, there are 244 stone seals that were used to make impres­sions in clay tablets and their envelopes, from the col­lec­tions of Moses Tay­lor Pyne; Robert Gar­rett, Class of 1897; and Edward D. Balken, Class of 1897. An online find­ing aid lists clay tablets and stone seals in the Man­u­scripts Divi­sion and The Scheide Library. Other clay tablets and stone seals are to be found in the Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Art Museum. The Prince­ton The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary owns a very sub­stan­tial tablet col­lec­tion of clay tablets.

The tablets on dis­play include the following:

No. 136. Baked clay cylin­der of King Neb­uchad­nez­zar II (r. 604–562 BCE). Accord­ing to the Old Tes­ta­ment, this Neo-Babylonian king was respon­si­ble for the con­struc­tion of the Hang­ing Gar­dens of Baby­lon and for the destruc­tion of the First Tem­ple in Jerusalem..

No. 555. Nail-shaped cone bear­ing the inscrip­tion of Gudea, the ensi of Lagash, South­ern Mesopotamia (r. ca. 2144–2124 BCE).

No. 553. Account­ing record list­ing expenses of women slaves dur­ing the reign of King Amar-Suen (r. 2045–2037 BCE). Third Dynasty of Ur.

No. 665. Pay-list of women (2027–2004 BCE). Third Dynasty of Ur.

No. 136. Not to be repro­duced with­out the per­mis­sion of the Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Library.

No. 665. Not to be repro­duced with­out the per­mis­sion of the Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Library.

On Sep­tem­ber 17, we mark the 150^th anniver­sary of the Bat­tle of Anti­etam (1862), fought in Mary­land near Sharps­burg and Anti­etam Creek between the armies of the Union Major Gen­eral George B. McClel­lan and Con­fed­er­ate Gen­eral Robert E. Lee. With over 23,000 casu­al­ties, the Bat­tle of Anti­etam is still con­sid­ered the blood­i­est single-day bat­tle in Amer­i­can his­tory. It was also the first Amer­i­can battle­field pho­tographed before those casu­al­ties were buried.

Found in the papers of George B. McClel­lan, Jr. (Class of 1886), a Prince­ton pro­fes­sor and one-time mayor of New York City, are some papers of his father, Gen­eral George B. McClel­lan (1826–1885). Pho­tographs com­prise the bulk of these papers, includ­ing sev­eral dozen pho­tos of the Bat­tle of Anti­etam, many of which depict dead sol­diers on the field or the makeshift tents and straw huts hous­ing the wounded. Anti­etam was the only bat­tle that McClel­lan fought from begin­ning to end, and it pro­duced mixed results for him. Despite being a tac­ti­cal draw—neither force was able to dec­i­mate the other, though Gen­eral Lee retreated back into Virginia—Antietam was con­sid­ered a turn­ing point of the war for the North, end­ing Lee’s first attempt to enter Union ter­ri­tory and giv­ing Pres­i­dent Abra­ham Lin­coln the con­fi­dence to announce a pre­lim­i­nary Eman­ci­pa­tion Procla­ma­tion on Sep­tem­ber 22, 1862. Nev­er­the­less, dis­ap­pointed with McClellan’s fail­ure to destroy Lee’s army, Lin­coln removed him from com­mand on Novem­ber 5, 1862.

The pho­tographs in McClellan’s papers were taken by Alexan­der Gard­ner, staff pho­tog­ra­pher to McClel­lan and, later, to other Union gen­er­als. As pho­tog­ra­phy became more widely avail­able in the 1830s and 1840s, war pho­tog­ra­phy was encour­aged in hopes that it would pro­vide a record of his­tor­i­cal events, begin­ning with daguerreo­types doc­u­ment­ing the Mexican-American War in 1847. At the time of the Bat­tle of Anti­etam, Gard­ner was work­ing for pho­tog­ra­pher Mathew Brady, whose stu­dio mark­ings are on the back of the pho­tographs; he would leave Brady’s stu­dio shortly there­after. Gardner’s pho­tographs of Anti­etam and the Civil War, which were dis­played in Brady’s New York gallery, sold as prints, and pub­lished as wood­cut engrav­ings in news­pa­pers through­out the coun­try, shocked their view­ers, many of whom saw these dev­as­tat­ing scenes of war for the first time.

Selec­tions from these pho­tographs will be on dis­play in an upcom­ing exhi­bi­tion of Amer­i­can his­tory in Firestone’s Main Gallery in Spring 2013. McClellan’s papers are among more than a hun­dred col­lec­tions in the Man­u­scripts Divi­sion that relate in whole or part to the Civil War. Other col­lec­tions include the Civil War Let­ters of Adam Badeau, John S. Cop­ley Civil War Let­ters, Roswell Lam­son Papers, and Amer­i­can Civil War Col­lec­tion. Bound man­u­scripts relat­ing to the Civil War, includ­ing diaries, let­ter books, order books, and drafts of mem­oirs and his­to­ries of the war, can also be found in Gen­eral Man­u­scripts col­lec­tions C0199 and C0938, acces­si­ble through the Main Cat­a­log. These are com­ple­mented by hold­ings of other divi­sions and col­lec­tions of the Depart­ment of Rare Books and Spe­cial Col­lec­tions, as well as the Scheide Library.

Click on each image to see larger photo. Not to be repro­duced with­out per­mis­sion of the Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Library:

Could an empty box have a story to tell? One such box does. As a result of the ongo­ing Fire­stone ren­o­va­tion, Library staff clear­ing an old stor­age area recently dis­cov­ered an early 19^th–cen­tury doc­u­ment box or chest (36 x 69 x 30 cm), made of wood cov­ered in pat­terned wall­pa­per, with residues of red seal­ing wax, and still with its orig­i­nal hand-wrought iron han­dles and clasps. The box was prob­a­bly made in New York around 1815, since it is lined on the inside with print­ers’ waste from a pub­lished address by Dr. David Hosack (1769–1835), Prince­ton Class of 1789, titled “Obser­va­tions on the Laws Gov­ern­ing the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion of Con­ta­gious Dis­eases, and the Means of Arrest­ing their Progress.” Hosack read this address on June 9, 1814 before the newly formed Lit­er­ary and Philo­soph­i­cal Soci­ety of New-York, which pub­lished it a year later in its jour­nal, Trans­ac­tions of the Lit­er­ary and Philo­soph­i­cal Soci­ety of New-York, vol. 1 (1815), pp. 201–239. This vol­ume was printed by Van Win­kle & Wiley, a New York printing-and-publishing firm estab­lished by Cor­nelius Van Win­kle and Charles Wiley in 1814 at 3 Wall Street–the fore­run­ner of the sci­en­tific pub­lisher John Wiley & Sons. Hosack was a physi­cian, botanist, and edu­ca­tor, per­haps best known for treat­ing the mor­tal wounds of Alexan­der Hamil­ton after his duel with Aaron Burr in 1804. In the 1814 address, Hosack gave his opin­ions about the rate of infec­tion for yel­low fever, which had rav­aged New York in 1803. The Man­u­scripts Divi­sion has a col­lec­tion of Hosack’s papers.

A note on the box indi­cated that it had come to Prince­ton in the 1980s with the Liv­ingston and Delafield fam­ily papers, which were given to the Library in 1986 by Mr. J. Den­nis Delafield (Class of 1957) and Pro­fes­sor Pene­lope D. John­son. They had orig­i­nally been housed at Mont­gomery Place, Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., just over a hun­dred miles north of New York City. Mont­gomery Place was the ances­tral sum­mer res­i­dence of many mem­bers of the Liv­ingston and Delafield fam­i­lies. In doc­u­ment boxes such as this, fam­ily mem­bers kept bun­dles of per­sonal, polit­i­cal, and legal papers.

The Edward Liv­ingston Papers, com­pris­ing 165 boxes of papers as well as maps, rolls, and other arti­facts, is one of Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Library’s most exten­sive col­lec­tions doc­u­ment­ing the early Amer­i­can repub­lic. These papers trace the career of Amer­i­can lawyer, diplo­mat, states­man, and legal the­o­rist Edward Liv­ingston (1764–1836). The bulk of the col­lec­tion con­sists of 56 boxes of Livingston’s cor­re­spon­dence, span­ning most of his adult life, includ­ing let­ters from renowned lawyers, econ­o­mists, jurists, and politi­cians. Jeremy Ben­tham, Aaron Burr, Mathew Carey, Henry Dil­worth Gilpin, and Mar­tin Van Buren are just a few of the cor­re­spon­dents. Livingston’s papers also doc­u­ment his work on the Louisiana Civil Code and advo­cacy of penal reform and the abo­li­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, as well as his role in Pres­i­dent Andrew Jackson’s admin­is­tra­tion as a sup­porter in the Con­gress and Sen­ate, and later as U.S. Sec­re­tary of State and min­is­ter to France. Per­haps the most impor­tant doc­u­ment in his papers is his draft of the “Nul­li­fi­ca­tion Procla­ma­tion,” writ­ten by Liv­ingston for Jack­son dur­ing the Nul­li­fi­ca­tion Cri­sis in 1832.

More­over, the col­lec­tion encom­passes an abun­dance of legal records, land records, and finan­cial records, many of which per­tain to Livingston’s law prac­tice and pri­vate affairs, from a scan­dal involv­ing the dis­ap­pear­ance of cus­toms house funds in 1803 to his entan­gle­ment with Gen­eral James Wilkin­son over his alleged con­spir­acy with Aaron Burr and his split with Pres­i­dent Thomas Jef­fer­son over title to land in New Orleans, Louisiana. The col­lec­tion also con­tains the land records and finan­cial doc­u­ments of Livingston’s mother and sis­ter, the Hud­son Val­ley landown­ers Mar­garet Beek­man Liv­ingston (1724–1800) and Janet Liv­ingston Mont­gomery (1743–1828), and almost three cen­turies’ worth of ledgers, account books, rent books, day books, receipts, and bal­ance sheets.

The Delafields were avid col­lec­tors of fam­ily his­tory and family-related mem­o­ra­bilia in the Hud­son River Val­ley region. John Ross Delafield (Class of 1896)’s papers com­prise the largest seg­ment of the Delafield Fam­ily Papers. As pres­i­dent of the Reserve Offi­cers Asso­ci­a­tion from 1923 to 1926 and of the Mil­i­tary Order of World War from 1930 to 1933, his cor­re­spon­dence and other records reflect his avid inter­est in geneal­ogy and local his­tory, his views on the can­cel­la­tion of Allied war debts from World War I, and his advo­cacy of mil­i­tary pre­pared­ness. The papers of John Ross Delafield’s grand­fa­ther, Joseph Delafield (1790–1875), a lawyer, sol­dier, and sci­en­tist, are also exten­sively rep­re­sented. They include col­lege note­books; cor­re­spon­dence, pro­ceed­ings, sur­vey maps, and accounts relat­ing to the United States Bound­ary Com­mis­sion sur­vey of the Cana­dian bor­der under the Treaty of Ghent; cor­re­spon­dence relat­ing to the Lyceum of Nat­ural His­tory (later the New York Acad­emy of Sci­ence), of which he was pres­i­dent from 1827 to 1866; and records of the 46th Infantry dur­ing the War of 1812 and the bounty claims of some its vet­er­ans. Major Delafield’s main cor­re­spon­dents include John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Ben­jamin Sil­li­man, and Ben­jamin Tallmadge.

J. Den­nis Delafield and Pene­lope John­son also gave the Library a gen­er­ous endow­ment that sup­ported the cat­a­loging and preser­va­tion of these papers, and which con­tin­ues to sup­port the pro­cess­ing of other early Amer­i­can man­u­script col­lec­tions. The Library looks for­ward to report­ing on fur­ther dis­cov­er­ies to be made from these col­lec­tions. Other sig­nif­i­cant col­lec­tions of early Amer­i­can his­tory in the Man­u­scripts Divi­sion include the Andre De Cop­pet Col­lec­tion (Class of 1915), Louis Alexan­dre Berthier Col­lec­tion, Blair and Lee Fam­ily Papers, Rush Fam­ily Papers, and Stock­ton Fam­ily Papers. Items from many of these col­lec­tions, includ­ing this doc­u­ment box, will be on dis­play in an upcom­ing exhi­bi­tion of Amer­i­can his­tory in Firestone’s Main Gallery in Spring 2013.

Doc­u­ment box, open. Edward Liv­ingston Papers and Delafield Fam­ily Papers. Not to be repro­duced with­out per­mis­sion of the Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Library.

Doc­u­ment box, closed. Edward Liv­ingston Papers and Delafield Fam­ily Papers. Not to be repro­duced with­out per­mis­sion of the Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Library.

The Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Library’s exten­sive col­lec­tions of mate­ri­als relat­ing to F. Scott Fitzger­ald (1896—1940) (Class of 1917) have been enhanced by a recent gift of 22 items from Mar­garet Finney McPher­son. These include over a dozen let­ters from Fitzger­ald to McPherson’s par­ents, Fitzgerald’s Prince­ton class­mate and friend Eben Finney (Class of 1919) and Eben’s wife, Mar­garet, as well as let­ters by Fitzgerald’s wife, Zelda (1900—1948), and his daugh­ter, Scot­tie (1921—1986).

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s let­ters are dated between 1936 and 1938, and serve as a win­dow into the last years of his life, when he moved to Hol­ly­wood to work as a screen­writer. As he explains to the Finneys in one let­ter, “A writer not writ­ing is prac­ti­cally a maniac within him­self. Because of this—I mean too many anx­i­eties and too much intro­spec­tion I’m going to Hol­ly­wood next month & extro­vert a while, do a pic­ture on order for Har­lowe & Robert Tay­lor, and then some other work for Metro if they want me to stay on.”

In Hol­ly­wood, Fitzger­ald signed a con­tract with MGM for $1,000 a week, which was later renewed for $1,250, a sub­stan­tial sum dur­ing the Depres­sion. He worked on many movies, includ­ing Gone with the Wind, but received a screen­writ­ing credit for only one, Three Com­rades. He describes his work on Three Com­rades in a let­ter to the Finneys, writ­ten on MGM let­ter­head; in other let­ters, he men­tions work­ing with the actor and screen­writer Don­ald Ogden Stew­art and offers his impres­sions of Hol­ly­wood and the movie industry.

Many of his let­ters also reveal his anx­i­eties about par­ent­ing his teenage daugh­ter Frances Scott “Scot­tie” Fitzger­ald. He expressed con­cerns about her grades, her roman­tic life, and the influ­ence of his lifestyle upon her own, and repeat­edly urged the Finneys to allow their daugh­ter, Mar­garet “Peaches” Finney, to join Scot­tie on a visit to Hol­ly­wood where, he promised, he would intro­duce them to movie stars but not to alco­hol or mar­i­juana. In 1938, Peaches and Scot­tie did visit Hol­ly­wood, where they had their pic­ture taken with the actor Errol Flynn.

Fitzger­ald died of a mas­sive heart attack in Hol­ly­wood at age 44. His last work, left unfin­ished at the time of his death and pub­lished posthu­mously as The Last Tycoon (1941), reflects his years in Hol­ly­wood in its main char­ac­ter, Mon­roe Stahr, who was inspired by the pro­ducer Irv­ing Thal­berg. The col­lec­tion includes a let­ter from Fitzgerald’s widow, Zelda, thank­ing Mar­garet Finney for her sup­port after Fitzgerald’s death. The Finneys lived in Bal­ti­more, where the Fitzger­alds had also lived for sev­eral years. “[Fitzger­ald] thought so hap­pily of Bal­ti­more,” Zelda wrote. “His peo­ple came from Mary­land and he always felt that get­ting back to those flow­er­ing and peace­ful slopes was to be going home. He loved the hos­pitable white roads and the immac­u­lacy of the bright green fields, and always hoped that some­day he would be able to live there forever.”

These mate­ri­als have been added to the F. Scott Fitzger­ald Addi­tional Papers. Other col­lec­tions at the Library with exten­sive mate­r­ial related to the Fitzger­alds include the F. Scott Fitzger­ald Papers, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Zelda Fitzger­ald Papers, Craig House Med­ical Records on Zelda Fitzger­ald, Ginevra King Col­lec­tion Relat­ing to F. Scott Fitzger­ald, and H. N. Swan­son Files on F. Scott Fitzger­ald.

Carl Van Vechten, pho­to­graph of F. Scott Fitzger­ald, undated. Not to be repro­duced with­out per­mis­sion of the Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Library.