Collection Highlight: Boardman Women of the Elijah Boardman Papers
Boardman Women of the Elijah Boardman Papers The Litchfield Historical Society Litchfield, Connecticut
In September, The Litchfield Historical Society began a project to digitize the papers of U.S. Senator Elijah Boardman with funding from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC). In his youth, Boardman served in the Revolutionary War. He then trained as a clerk in New Haven, Connecticut and went on to set up several shops in Northwestern Connecticut. As a member of the Connecticut Land Company, he participated in the settlement of Ohio where a town is named for him. Following six terms in the state legislature, he was elected Senator of Connecticut in 1821. The Society’s collection of the Senator’s papers is comprised mostly of business records detailing transactions that exchanged local agricultural products for foreign goods. These ledgers and receipts document not only the purchases of the upper class, but also the labor and barter of working men and women, including enslaved and free African Americans.
Elijah Boardman’s 1810 Ballance [sic] Book (left) and bundles of documents in the collection (right).
While we are thrilled to have the papers of such a significant figure, we were especially delighted to discover that the Boardman family had preserved the correspondence of Boardman’s wife, Mary Anna Whiting Boardman, and his daughters, Caroline Boardman Schroeder and Cornelia Boardman. These letters shed light on aspects of family life and the experiences of women, including how they managed and conversed about the health of various family members; the skills (or lack thereof) of hired help; financial difficulties; and politics. The letters include doodles and “kisses” from the children, but also address more serious topics like financial struggles and death. We are fortunate to have a published memoir of Mary Anna Whiting Boardman, which provides context for much of the correspondence. It is available in the Internet Archive which allows for easy searching.
A letter to Cornelia (top) and a “kiss” from Margaret (bottom).
Some of the correspondence was damaged by water prior to its arrival at the Historical Society, resulting in loss of content. Our hope is that digital enhancement will render some of the damaged items more legible. This rare glimpse of a late 18th and early 19th century family from the perspective of women will be made available alongside the ledgers and blotters as we work to create both an item-level finding aid and digital surrogates, beginning with bound materials and then moving on to correspondence, bills, and receipts.
We have chosen to make our work public as we move forward with the project. The finding aid is located at: http://archives.litchfieldhistoricalsociety.org:8081/repositories/2/resources/1129.
The digital surrogates can be viewed in the Connecticut Digital Archive at http://collections.ctdigitalarchive.org/islandora/object/400002%3A33.
A Tumblr page documenting interesting finds: http://eboardman.tumblr.com/.
Memoir of the life and character of Mrs. Mary Anna Boardman, with a historical account of her forefathers, and biographical and genealogical notices of many of her kindred and relatives by Schroeder, John Frederick, 1800-1857, 1849, New Haven: Printed for private distribution. https://archive.org/stream/memoiroflifechar00inschr#page/n11/mode/2up
This collection will provide an important look at the lives of women in the Early Republic and we are appreciative of the funding from NHPRC to help make it available. Check back often to see our progress, and contact Linda Hocking ([email protected]) with any questions.
-submitted by Linda Hocking, Women’s Collections Section supporter