Skip to main content Skip to main navigation

Gustavus Vasa Fox Collection

Call Number

MS 439.17

Date

1823-1919 (bulk 1860-1889), inclusive

Creator

Extent

10 Linear feet (21 boxes, 15 volumes)

Language of Materials

English .

Abstract

The collection includes correspondence, personal papers and documents, financial records, speeches and writings, memorabilia and souvenirs, printed materials, and clippings of Gustavus Vasa Fox during his tenure as Assistant Secretary of the Navy and afterwards; correspondence of his wife Virginia Woodbury Fox; and correspondence and personal papers pertaining to other Woodbury and Fox family members. The materials in this collection have been digitized and are available online to on-site researchers and to users affiliated with subscribing institutions via EBSCOhost.

Biographical Note

Gustavus Vasa Fox (1821-1883) read law with his future wife's uncle, Isaac O. Barnes, in 1837 and began his maritime career as a midshipman in 1838. He served in various naval and mercantile vessels before retiring in 1856 to manage the Bay State Woolen Mills in Lawrence, Massachusetts. His suggestions for the relief of Fort Sumter were not followed, but through connections to Abraham Lincoln via Postmaster Montgomery Blair (his wife's brother-in-law) he was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy under Gideon Welles in 1861. He served in that position through the Civil War, functioning as de facto chief of naval operations. He championed the cause of ironclad fighting ships, supporting John Ericsson (see Series 16) in his bid to build Monitor. Fox is credited with improving the management of the Navy that made possible its wartime victories.

In 1866 he made the first transatlantic voyage in an ironclad (Miantonomoh) to deliver a congressional resolution to Tsar Alexander II, congratulating him on his escape from an assassination attempt. The ship made extensive stops in European ports en route. In 1867 he made an unsuccessful attempt to take over the Southwest Pacific railroad, the forerunner of the St. Louis-San Francisco railroad. In 1869 he began management of Middlesex Mills in Lowell, Massachusetts, moving to Boston in 1874 from where he commuted to Lawrence to manage Washington Mills for the commission house of Mudge, Sawyer, and Co. He retired in 1878 and pursued interests that included documenting Columbus's first landfall in the new world, and the local history and topography of New Hampshire.

Arrangement

The materials are arranged in 10 series, each of which is arranged chronologically unless otherwise described in its Scope and Content note. Many of the series were previously edited and arranged by Virginia Woodbury Fox and/or Colonel Robert Thompson in preparation for the latter's editing and publication of Fox's letters ("The Fox Papers, being the confidential correspondence of Gustavus V. Fox, Assistant Secretary of the Navy during the Civil War," Vols. I and II, edited by Colonel Robert M. Thompson and Rear Admiral Richard Wainwright and printed by DeVinne Press, New York, as the ninth and tenth volumes of the Society's publications) in 1918 and 1919. In some series, pages were numbered in order in pencil; in others Mrs. Fox has included notes about materials that she destroyed, erased, or otherwise redacted.

The series are:

Missing Title

  1. Series I. Correspondence
  2. Series II. Personal papers and documents
  3. Series III. Speeches and writings
  4. Series IV. Financial records
  5. Series V. Memorabilia, souvenirs, and visual materials
  6. Series VI. Printed materials and clippings
  7. Series VII. Virginia L. Woodbury Fox papers
  8. Series VIII. Woodbury and Fox family papers
  9. Series IX. Archival and filing records
  10. Series X. Bound volumes

Scope and Content Note

The collection includes correspondence, personal papers and documents, financial records, speeches and writings, memorabilia and souvenirs, printed materials, and clippings of Gustavus Vasa Fox; correspondence of his wife Virginia Woodbury Fox; and correspondence and personal papers pertaining to other Woodbury and Fox family members. The materials in this collection have been digitized and are available online to on-site researchers and to users affiliated with subscribing institutions via EBSCOhost.

The Gustavus Vasa Fox Collection forms Series 17 of the Naval History Society Collection, comprising 53 individual collections named for famous naval figures and ships, as well as the records of the Naval History Society itself, and donated to the New-York Historical Society by the Naval History Society in 1925.

Access Restrictions

Open to qualified researchers.

Photocopying undertaken by staff only. Limited to twenty exposures of stable, unbound material per day. (Researchers may not accrue unused copy amounts from previous days.)

Use Restrictions

Permission to quote from this collection in a publication must be requested and granted in writing. Send permission requests, citing the name of the collection from which you wish to quote, to

Library Director
The New-York Historical Society
Two West 77th Street
New York, NY 10024

The copyright law of the United States governs the making of photocopies and protects unpublished materials as well as published materials. Unpublished materials created before January 1, 1978 cannot be quoted in publication without permission of the copyright holder.

Preferred Citation

This collection should be cited as NHSC-Fox, The New-York Historical Society.

Provenance

Donated to the New-York Historical Society by the Naval History Society in 1925.

Collection processed by

Processed by Celia Hartmann.

About this Guide

This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2023-08-21 15:46:44 -0400.
Language: Description is in English.

Edition of this Guide

This version was derived from Fox.xml

Repository

New-York Historical Society
New-York Historical Society
170 Central Park West
New York, NY 10024