Paterson Family Papers, 1750-1882

Creator
Paterson, William, 1745-1806 [Browse]
Format
Manuscript
Language
English
Description
  • 6 boxes
  • 8.6 linear feet

Availability

Available Online

Copies in the Library

Location Call Number Status Location Service Notes
Special Collections - Manuscripts Archival. Special Collections Use Only C0541 Browse related items Request

    Details

    Subject(s)
    Getty AAT genre
    Compiled/​Created
    1750-1882
    Restrictions note
    The collection is open for research.
    Summary note
    • Consists of selected papers of members of the Paterson family of New Jersey, chiefly those of William Paterson (Princeton Class of 1763), his father, Richard Paterson, his son, William Bell Paterson (Princeton Class of 1801), and twin grandsons, William and Stephen Van Rensselaer Paterson (Princeton Class of 1835). The collections provides 17th, 18th, and 19th-century source material for the history of the College of New Jersey and of the Colonial and post-Colonial history of the State of New Jersey.
    • The collection consists of selected manuscripts, correspondence, letterbooks, documents, commonplace books (1763, 1793-1796), an account book (1786-1787), and legal opinions of chiefly four members of the Paterson family of New Jersey: William Paterson (Princeton Class of 1763), his son, William Bell Paterson (Princeton Class of 1801), and his twin grandsons, William and Stephen Van Rensselaer Paterson (Princeton Class of 1835). There is also some material of Paterson's father, Richard Patterson. The collection contains official documents of William Patterson the elder that relate to the Revolutionary War, the New Jersey Continental Army, and East Jersey Properties, as well as material dating from his undergraduate years at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University). There are college essays, debates, and orations delivered at the Princeton Cliosophic Society, post-college political essays by William Bell Paterson, some of which were published in the Guardian (1808-1809) and the Palladium of Liberty, and poems by William and Stephen Van Rensselaer Paterson including the autograph manuscript of their Poems of Twin Graduates of the College of New Jersey (1882). Among the papers of William Paterson (grandson) are twenty letters (1837-1846) addressed to him and his sister Cornelia Bell by their friend Anthony Walton White Evans. In these letters, mailed from Syracuse, N.Y., while Evans was working as an engineer on the Erie Canal, he writes about his life in northern New York State and the Onondaga Indian Tribes, among other details.
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