Updating Manuscript Collection Housing Part II

FAIN: PG-271757-20

Harriet Beecher Stowe Center (Hartford, CT 06105-3243)
Elizabeth Giard Burgess (Project Director: January 2020 to November 2024)

The purchase of preservation supplies as the second phase of rehousing the Stowe Center’s manuscript collections, following a 2019 Preservation Assistance Grant. Collections currently stored without folders and/or separated by enclosures would be rehoused, and those with damaged or unstable boxes replaced. Overall, the collections consist of 195,000 items dating from c. 1500 to the present and comprise forty-nine individual collections for a total of 316 linear feet. This stage of the project would focus on the Foote Collection, twenty-two boxes of Stowe’s maternal family manuscripts; the Katharine Seymour Day Collection, 166 boxes of the historic preservationist’s personal correspondence, notes, financial papers, family materials, and other documents; the 15 boxes of the Saturday Morning Club Collection, with meeting agendas, invitations, programs, minutes, and membership lists of the Hartford Women’s Literary Club; and 11 boxes of the papers of architect George Keller. Together, these collections illuminate such topics as the material culture and history of anti-slavery, the history of slavery in the United States, women’s roles, the history of stage and screen, and historic preservation in Hartford.

The project centers on the second part of rehousing the manuscript collection at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center; part one is also supported by a NEH preservation grant. The project follows protocols laid out by the Northeast Document Conservation Center conservators. The rehousing process consists of purchasing new chemically stable archival preservation supplies and transferring the collection items to these new containers.