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Contact information: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/mss.contact
Catalog Record: https://lccn.loc.gov/mm2013085789
Collection material in English
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the LC Catalog. They are grouped by name of person or organization, by subject or location, and by occupation and listed alphabetically.
The papers of Edward Shaw, United States Patent Office clerk, were transferred to the Library of Congess by the General Services Administration in 2013.
The status of copyright in the unpublished writings of Edward Shaw is governed by the Copyright Law of the United States (Title 17, U.S.C.).
Restrictions apply governing the use, photoduplication, or publication of items in this collection. Consult reference staff in the Manuscript Division for information concerning these restrictions. In addition, many collections are stored off-site and advance notice is needed to retrieve these items for research use.
Researchers wishing to cite this collection should include the following information: Container number, Edward Shaw Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
The papers of Edward Shaw (1824-1914) span the years 1847-1867, with the bulk of the material dating from 1850 to 1859. The papers are in English, consisting chiefly of correspondence but include financial papers, notes, printed matter, and envelopes.
Shaw worked with Clara Barton in the United States Patent Office in the 1850s and lived in the same building at 437 7th Street, NW (then 488 1/2 7th Street), Washington, D.C., where Barton operated her bureau for missing soldiers at the end of the Civil War. Shaw lived at this residence for approximately fifty years. This collection of papers and other material relating to Clara Barton were discovered in the attic of the building in 1996.
The majority of the Shaw papers consists of correspondence from Shaw's mother, Salona Wilmarth Shaw, and his sister, Anna Shaw Barney, who lived in Attleboro, Massachusetts, and the Brainard family of Haddam, Connecticut, with whom Shaw boarded while teaching school from about 1849 to 1852. The letters document daily life of women in antebellum New England, the importance of letter-writing to convey family and local news, and the significance of visiting during that era. Shaw’s sister was a school teacher; her letters contain comments about her students and her efforts to educate them. In a letter of 18 January 1855, Anna Shaw writes about traveling to Boston where she saw Henry J. Gardner, governor of Massachusetts, take the oath of office and give his inaugural address. Also in that letter she mentions that while on that trip she sat near Horace Greeley, editor of the
Shaw also received letters from Edward Hodges relating to military pension land warrants
and letters from Samuel R. Brainard concerning Shaw’s investment in the
The collection also includes references to national political matters such as the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 (letter of 14 October 1850), the presidential campaign of 1856 (letters of 30 January 1854 and 16 September 1856), and the bloodshed in Kansas over slavery (letters of 28 May 1856 and 16 September 1856). Also included is a form letter from the office of Senator Charles Sumner, 7 March 1859, mentioning the lingering physical and political effects of Sumner’s caning by Representative Preston Brooks in 1856.
This collection is arranged chronologically by date, with fragments, loose envelopes and wrappers, miscellaneous photocopies, and restricted items filed at the end of the dated material.
Catalog Record: https://lccn.loc.gov/mm2013085789