First Citizen Remembered: The Papers of John Bigelow and the Nation at Home and Abroad, 1833-1911

FAIN: PB-275245-20

Trustees of Union College (Schenectady, NY 12308-3256)
Sarah Schmidt (Project Director: May 2020 to August 2021)

Reinstating the suspended hire of an archivist to catalog, digitize, and describe a portion of the papers of John Bigelow (1817-1911), an American newspaper editor and diplomat to France during the Civil War, with a special focus on the diaries of his wife, Jane Tunis Poultney (1829-1889), an active participant in 19th-century literary circles.

Through creation and hiring of an archivist, we will improve access to the collection and better assess how to move forward in digitizing the entire collection. We will survey the collection and track the time it takes to digitize and transcribe sections of the collection, with a particular focus on the scrapbooks and diaries. Of particular interest are the 16 diaries written by Jane Bigelow and representing her life in New York literary circles. John Bigelow (1817-1911) had a distinguished career as an editor, writer, statesman, and tireless advocate for the public good. Union College’s Bigelow Collection consists of over 80 linear feet of material, including over 20,000 letters; 17 bound diaries; 1 loose-leaf diary; 18 bound scrapbooks; and 1 linear foot of mixed archival collections consisting of letters, notes, ephemera, and professional working papers. Currently, there is minimal access to the collection through an on-line database and no access to the diaries and scrapbooks.