Naval History Society collection
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Abstract
The collection consists of 53 separate collections, many named for renowned naval officers or vessels, documenting both military engagements and routine shipboard experience on naval and some commercial vessels, as well as naval design and the education of officers. The collections include correspondence, letter books, journals and diaries, lectures, essays, account books, biographical writings, genealogical information, scrapbooks, orders, notes, articles and clippings, photographs, manuscripts, and ships' logs, as well as the organizational records and correspondence of the Naval History Society itself.
The Edward Yorke McCauley diary and Point Lookout sketches are digitized and available in the Shelby White and Leon Levy Digital Library.
Portions of this collection relating to the Civil War have been digitized and are available to on-site researchers and to users affiliated with subscribing institutions via EBSCOhost.
Arrangement
The collection is arranged into 53 series in the alphabetical order of the Naval History Society's individual named collections, followed by three series of logbooks, a Miscellaneous Manuscripts collection, and the Society's records series.
In some cases the inclusion of materials in a series seems fairly arbitrary. For example, John Sanford Barnes's materials on John Barry and John Paul Jones appear both in those named series (Series 5, Series 28) and in the appropriate folders of the Miscellaneous Manuscripts collection (Series 52). The final series is the records of the Society itself, documenting all of its routine activities including the editing and publishing of some of the manuscript collections; it is organized into seven subseries.
The Barnes family materials have been organized into three individual series: General James Barnes, John Sanford Barnes, Colonel James Barnes (Series 2-4). The logbooks have also been organized into three separate series: US Navy, British Navy, and commercial vessels (Series 49-51). Larger collections of mixed papers and published materials, including those of Gustavus Vasa Fox (Series 17) and Caspar Goodrich (Series 21), have been organized into subseries. Original order within folders has been retained; some materials are now housed in separate oversized (OS) boxes, noted in the container lists.
The series are:
Series 1. William Bainbridge
Series 2. General James Barnes
Series 3. John Sanford Barnes
Series 4. Col James Barnes
Series 5. John Barry
Series 6. Charles Biddle
Series 7. USS Boston
Series 8. French E. Chadwick
Series 9. Henry Clinton
Series 10. Gustavus Conyngham
Series 11. James Fenimore Cooper
Series 12. Francis G. Dallas
Series 13. USS Dictator
Series 14. William C. Duer
Series 15. George R. Durand
Series 16. John Ericsson
Series 17. Gustavus Vasa Fox
Series 18. France, Navy
Series 19. Alexander Gallop
Series 20. USS General Grant
Series 21. Caspar F. Goodrich
Series 22. Great Britain, Navy
Series 23. Samuel Dana Greene
Series 24. Theodore P. Greene
Series 25. Lewis Randolph Hamersly
Series 26. Lt. William Henderson
Series 27. Isaac Hull
Series 28. John Paul Jones
Series 29. Edward Yorke McCauley
Series 30. Richard Worsam Meade 2nd
Series 31. Richard Worsam Meade 3rd
Series 32. Ensign D.W. Mullan
Series 33. Navigation notebook
Series 34. Thomas Pattison
Series 35. USS Pensacola
Series 36. Oliver Hazard Perry
Series 37. Pt. Lookout Sketchbook
Series 38. Rhode Island
Series 39. G.B. Rodney
Series 40. Edward Hallam Saltonstall
Series 41. USF Savannah
Series 42. Sarah Smith Stafford
Series 43. US Mail Steam Ship Company
Series 44. US Navy: Officers' autograph letters signed
Series 45. US Navy: Civil War ships
Series 46. William K. Wheeler
Series 47. John Ancrum Winslow
Series 48. Henry A. Wise
Series 49. Logbooks: US Navy
Series 50. Logbooks: British Navy
Series 51. Logbooks: Commercial vessels
Series 52. Miscellaneous manuscripts
Series 53. Naval History Society records
Scope and Content Note
The Collection consists of 53 individual collections, many named for renowned naval officers or vessels. These include correspondence, letter books, journals and diaries, lectures, essays, account books, biographical writings, genealogical information, scrapbooks, orders, notes, articles and clippings, photographs, manuscripts, and ships' logs, as well as the organizational records and correspondence of the Naval History Society itself.
The majority of the collections document American naval engagements and commercial maritime pursuits, personalities, and vessels; a few collections of British and French documents are included (Series 18, 22, 39, 50). The Collection as a whole provides primary sources on American naval involvement in hostilities from the Revolution (1775-1783) to the Spanish American War (1898), as well as routine commercial and naval shipboard life, naval design, navigation, education and officer training. The Society's records (Series 53) document the founding, management, and activities of a collecting and publishing organization in the first third of the 20th century.
As well as documenting individual events and personalities, the Collection is a richly detailed example of late 19th and early 20th century subject-specific collecting activity and interests. Many of the collections are so-called artificial collections, with items specifically accumulated and grouped together to document a particular subject or person, and showing the personality and interests of the collector through the materials' organization and editing.
The Collection reflects most strongly the personal interest of John Sanford Barnes (see Series 3), founding President of the Naval History Society in 1909 and a collector of books, manuscripts, and memorabilia connected to naval history and personalities. His son, Col. James Barnes (see Series 4), donated Barnes's collections to the Naval History Society in 1915. The library was cataloged under the XN call number and the artifacts included in the museum collections of New-York Historical Society after it absorbed the Naval History Society's collections in 1925 (see Series 53 for a complete chronology).
Other materials were subsequently donated to or purchased by the Naval History Society in fulfillment of its mission of "publishing and preserving manuscripts, documents, and writings relating to our naval history, naval art and science, and the surroundings and experiences of seamen in general and of American seamen in particular." Some of the manuscript collections were edited and published by the Naval History Society for distribution to its members (see Series 53, subseries VI, for a complete list). The John Barry (Series 5), James Fenimore Cooper (Series 11), John Paul Jones (Series 28), Officers' autograph letters signed (Series 44), and Miscellaneous Manuscripts (Series 52) collections document the emphasis on autograph and highpoint collecting typical of his time, which were particular interests of John Sanford Barnes.
The collections vary in size and complexity, from one volume to an individual's lifetime of personal and family papers. Although amassed separately, because of their shared focus the constituent collections are interrelated in illuminating ways: Assistant Secretary of the Navy Gustavus Vasa Fox (Series 17) is strongly represented in Monitor designer John Ericsson's (Series 16) correspondence received (and vice versa), while the USS Dictator (Series 13) collection provides a photograph of an ironclad of the Monitor class; Charles Biddle's (Series 6) early documentation of Panama prefigures the extensive and routine ocean traffic of the Gold Rush period (Series 43); Theodore P. Greene (Series 24) commanded a vessel on which Richard Worsam Meade 3rd (Series 31) served; the collections containing material on Isaac Hull and William Bainbridge (Series 1, Series 27, Series 52) provide complementary documentation of the naval engagements of the War of 1812; while the commercial logbooks in both Series 43 and 51 document some of the same routes.
Although focused on naval history, the Collection is by no means exhaustive or complete. Barnes's personal interest; collections put on the market by individuals, dealers, and auction houses; and changing levels of interest in collections of both notable individuals and those lesser known all contributed to the availability of materials and their eventual inclusion in (or absence from) the Collection.
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Access Restrictions
Materials in this collection may be stored offsite. For more information on making arrangements to consult them, please visit www.nyhistory.org/library/visit.
Portions of the collection that have been microfilmed will be brought to the researcher in that format and can be made available by Interlibrary loan. Researchers on site may print out unlimited copies from microfilm reader-printer machines at per-exposure rates. See guidelines in Reading Room for details.
Items that include presidential signatures will be presented to researchers in duplicate form.
Use Restrictions
Taking images of documents from the library collections for reference purposes by using hand-held cameras and in accordance with the library's photography guidelines is encouraged. As an alternative, patrons may request up to 20 images per day from staff.
Application to use images from this collection for publication should be made in writing to: Department of Rights and Reproductions, The New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West, New York, NY 10024-5194, rightsandrepro@nyhistory.org. Phone: (212) 873-3400 ext. 282.
Copyrights and other proprietary rights may subsist in individuals and entities other than the New-York Historical Society, in which case the patron is responsible for securing permission from those parties. For fuller information about rights and reproductions from N-YHS visit: https://www.nyhistory.org/about/rights-reproductions
Preferred Citation
This collection should be cited as The Naval History Society Collection, The New-York Historical Society.
Location of Materials
Provenance
Donated by the Naval History Society to the New-York Historical Society in 1925.