Updating Manuscript Collections Housing

FAIN: PG-266766-19

Harriet Beecher Stowe Center (Hartford, CT 06105-3243)
Elizabeth Giard Burgess (Project Director: January 2019 to January 2026)

The purchase of preservation supplies to rehouse manuscripts associated with Harriet Beecher Stowe, contained in 49 collections (316 linear feet) with substantial correspondence from Stowe and fellow nineteenth-century American authors Mark Twain, Charles Dudley Warner, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman; abolitionists John Greenleaf Whittier and Thomas W. Higginson; women’s rights activists Isabella Beecher Hooker, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Lucy Stone; and actor and playwright William Gillette.  Of special note are the 560 letters and documents written by or to Harriet Beecher Stowe between 1822 and 1896, which are regularly used by scholars, teachers, and local history researchers.  As recommended by a previous assessment, the new preservation-quality folders and boxes would allow the staff of the historic site and research library to replace well-worn enclosures from the 1970s, many of which pose threats to the collection.

This request to the National Endowment for the Humanities for a $10,000 Preservation Assistance Grant is to support purchasing preservation housing supplies for the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center’s (HBSC) Manuscript Collections as recommended by Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC).