Search

Letters of a business nature, discussing financial transactions and giving directions to Mr. Henry W. Kinsman of Boston for the handling of some of Webster's business during his absence. Most of the letters are dated from Washington, D.C.

The collection includes two diaries of his American tour (one is made up of his rough travel notes, the other is in edited form for circulation), a memorial volume of manuscripts about his wife (Ann Loxley Rhees) prepared by his daughter Eliza (Mrs. Nicholas Murray), and 1851 passport of Nicholas Murray, a letter of Thomas Chalmers Murray to his sister Mary Jones Murray Butler (the mother of Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia University), correspondence between Welsh historian Gwyn A. Williams and collection donor Mary Butler Brown, an essay entitled "Morgan John Rhees and Beula" by Gwyn A. Williams, Ann Loxley Rhees's valedictory oration on graduation from Philadelphia's Ladies Academy, an address on female education ca. 1789, family obituary clippings, poems, misc. items, and a photograph of Ann Loxley Rhees. An edited version of substantial sections of the diaries of M.J. Rhees was published in John Thomas Griffith's 1910 biography and miscellany of Rhees and his family, a copy of which is included in this collection. An edited version of a previously unpublished section of the diary, from May 2nd to July 9th 1795, was published in Northwest Ohio History (vol. 80, no. 2), but it is an unreliable transcription containing many inaccuracies, according to Dr E. Wyn James of Cardiff University, who is working on a new edition of the M.J. Rhees diaries.