Collections

The records consist of correspondence from the business records of William Bostwick (1796-1863), merchant of Augusta, Georgia, and New Haven, Connecticut, who dealt primarily in cotton. While most of the letters are on business, there are personal letters (1854, 1856) from Benjamin Silliman, Noah Porter, James Browning Miles, and Willis Strong Colton. The records also include sixty-two account books.

The principal figure in these papers is William Lewis Bostwick, the recipient of the approximately 213 letters which make up the collection. The letters were written to him while he was attending Jubilee College in Illinois and then Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. They are from family, friends, and teachers, and discuss student life, church matters, and family news with particular attention to the cost of Bostwick's education.

The Boswell Collection contains the correspondence, diaries, and manuscripts of author James Boswell; estate records, letters, personal and professional papers, and other materials documenting the lives and careers of ten generations of Boswells and their possession of the barony of Auchinleck; and correspondence relating to the political career of Alexander Bruce, Earl of Kincardine.

The papers primarily document the administration of the debt-burdened estate of Auchinleck after the death of Sir Alexander Boswell in 1822. They include business and legal correspondence; accounts, receipts, valuations and other estate records; the process of the settlement of Sir Alexander Boswell's heritable estate; and other financial and personal papers.
The papers also contain material pertaining to the related family of Douglas of Garallan, including land records, financial papers, and business correspondence. In addition, there are letters by Charles Douglas, a planter in Jamaica, concerning many aspects of his life and career, such as his ownership of slaves and opinions about slavery, immigrant life in Jamaica, and the impact of the Napoleonic Wars on the Caribbean. The letters of Patrick Charles Douglas Douglas Boswell describe his efforts to establish himself as a tea planter in India in the early 1880s.

The collection consists mainly of letters and writings by or pertaining to various members of the Boswell of Auchinleck family. Series III includes seventeen journals of weather conditions and work assignments on the Auchinleck estate.

The collection comprises 139 hand-cut paper collages on paper prepared with watercolor, created by Booth Grey (1740-1802) or those in his circle of acquaintances, in the manner of the well-known "paper mosaics" made by Mrs. Delany.

The collection consists of printed material relating to political and social conditions, and development in Botswana.

This record group includes materials deposited at various times by persons who served as Connecticut's agents on the bi-state commissions which established and maintained the boundary lines between Connecticut and her neighbor states.

The Bourne Family Papers consists of materials that document the lives of abolitionist, minister and newspaper editor George Bourne, his wife Mary Oland Stibbs Bourne and their descendants. The majority of materials in the collection document the professional careers of George Bourne and his son Theodore Bourne. George Bourne's papers include an Anti-Slavery Lecture of 1837 along with other religious writings. Theodore Bourne's papers chiefly relate to African American repatriation organizations such as the African Christian Civilization Society. Correspondence between the Bourne and Stibbs family in England and the United States document George and Mary Bourne's new life as they settled throughout the United States. Poems written by members of the Bourne Family and others such as abolitionists James Montgomery, Helen Maria Williams and John Greenleaf Whitter are also included.