Manuscript Collection
The CGS Manuscript Collection is essentially a collection of collections. Each individual collection is made up of papers of a genealogist, whether amateur or professional. Many of these collections include ancestry charts, family histories, letters, family group sheets, newspaper articles, certificates, compiled genealogies, vital and military records, deeds, probate records, society applications, photographs, and even some tintypes. While many of the records are copies, some are original.
What is the Manuscript Collection?
According to the University of Arkansas, “Manuscript collections include personal, professional, and family papers; business and organizational records; and other unique, typically unpublished historical documents in a variety of formats, from scrapbooks to correspondence to digital media.”
The documents may be a gold mine. Yes, sometimes you’ll “just” find copies of census or land records that you could (nowadays) find online. But there are also original letters: for example, the Addington, Davis, Huntingdon collection is almost entirely original letters between family members dating from the late 1800s and early 1900s. Original documents include an Alameda County land deed dating to 1867 and a handwritten genealogy written in the late 1600s in Boston. While the collection is heavily American, with quite a few families dating to colonial times, there are also records from England, France, Australia, and others.
Manuscript Collection Index and detailed finding aids
The Manuscript Collection Index briefly describes each collection, and includes the major geographies, timeframe, and primary surnames covered by that collection.
For some of the collections, we have detailed finding aids, listing the individual documents in the collection. They can be found using the links below:
Frank Covell Collection
Charles Francis Griffin, MD Collection
John Ellis Hale Collection
Frederick S. Sherman Collection
How to use the Manuscript Collection
The Manuscript Collection Index gives the title of each collection, along with a description of the geography and timeframe covered by the collection; a general description of the size of the collection and its contents; and a list of surnames appearing in the contents. There is also a link to a Detailed Finding Aid for the collection, if one exists.
One way to determine if the Manuscript Collection might have materials that would help you with your research is to search the surnames associated with each collection. Once you find your surname, you can look at a description of the collection, including the geographies and time frames covered, to help you determine if it is worth looking at the collection.
Note that the surnames are only those that are frequently referenced in the Collection materials; it does not contain every surname that is mentioned in the collection.
With materials that reflect research by the genealogists, as with public family trees, the quality of the research varies. However, the contributors are all serious genealogists, so the quality should be good. If nothing else, the research may give you ideas to pursue.
How to access the Manuscript Collection in person
You can access the Manuscript Collection in person with assistance from the Desk staff during CGS’s regular library hours.
How to access the digitized portion of the Manuscript Collection
CGS members can access digitized portions of the Manuscript Collection. You can click on the Detailed Finding Aids above which will list the Collection content by document, along with links to the digitized files; if you are not already logged in, you will be prompted to log in with your membership number. While we have scanned the materials using the best scanning technology available to us at the time of digitization, some of the digitized files may be difficult to read. It might be worth a trip in to view the original document: it might be more legible.