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Charles S. Hamlin Papers

A Finding Aid to the Collection in the Library of Congress

Prepared by Harry G. Heiss
Revised and expanded by Melinda Friend

Manuscript Division, Library of Congress

Washington, D.C.

2009

Contact information: http://lcweb.loc.gov/rr/mss/address.html

Finding aid encoded by Library of Congress Manuscript Division, 2009

Finding aid URL: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/eadmss.ms009205

Table of Contents

Collection Summary

Selected Search Terms

Personal Names

Organizations

Subjects

Locations

Related Names

Occupations

Administrative Information

Provenance:

Processing History:

Additional Guides:

Copyright Status:

Access and Restrictions:

Microfilm:

Preferred Citation:

Biographical Note

Scope and Content Note

Organization of the Papers

Container List

Appendix: List of Major Correspondents

Collection Summary

Selected Search Terms

The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the Library's online catalog. They are grouped by name of person or organization, by subject or location, and by occupation and listed alphabetically therein.

Personal Names

Organizations

Subjects

Locations

Related Names

Occupations

Administrative Information

Provenance:

The papers of Charles S. Hamlin, lawyer, politician, assistant secretary of the treasury, and governor of the Federal Reserve Board, were given to the Library of Congress between 1936 and 1955 by Hamlin and his wife Huybertie Pruyn Hamlin. Hamlin's diaries had been deposited earlier but were withdrawn before being returned as a gift. Additions were given by the Federal Reserve Board and Yale University from 1974 to 1982, and by Huybertie Pruyn Hamlin via the Woman's Democratic Club in 1998.

Processing History:

The papers of Charles S. Hamlin were first organized by the Library in 1955, and an unpublished register was prepared at that time. About 1988 the register was revised to include additions to the collection that had been received by the Library between 1974 and 1982. A subsequent register prepared in May 1994 reflected the rearrangement of the correspondence and miscellaneous material and the microfilming of the Charles S. Hamlin diaries, scrapbooks, and indexes to scrapbooks and the Anna Hamlin scrapbooks. The current register reflects the addition of material received in 1998. The finding aid was revised in 2009.

Additional Guides:

Brief descriptions of the Hamlin Papers appear in the Library of Congress Quarterly Journal of Current Acquisitions, May 1949, p. 85, and May 1955, p. 124, and the Library of Congress Information Bulletin, 21 Feb. 1955, 6 Sept. 1955, and 9 Apr. 1956.

Copyright Status:

Copyright in the unpublished writings of Charles S. Hamlin in these papers and in other collections of papers in the custody of the Library of Congress has been dedicated to the public.

Access and Restrictions:

The papers of Charles S. Hamlin are open to research. Researchers are advised to contact the Manuscript Reading Room prior to visiting. Many collections are stored off-site and advance notice is needed to retrieve these items for research use.a

Microfilm:

A microfilm edition of part of these papers is available on 224 reels. Consult a reference librarian in the Manuscript Division concerning availability for purchase or interlibrary loan.

Preferred Citation:

Researchers wishing to cite this collection should include the following information: Container or reel number, Charles S. Hamlin Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Biographical Note

Scope and Content Note

The papers of Charles Sumner Hamlin (1861-1938) span the years 1869-1968, with the bulk of the items concentrated in the period 1880-1938. These papers primarily concern Hamlin's civic and political affairs and his family's active social life in Washington, D.C., from Grover Cleveland's administration through that of Franklin D. Roosevelt. They also relate to the formation and early history of the Federal Reserve System. Included are diaries, scrapbooks, indexes, incoming and outgoing correspondence, speeches, reports, newspaper clippings, brochures and other printed matter, unpublished writings, photographs, autobiographical notes, genealogical records, and other original and secondary material.

Charles S. Hamlin's scrapbooks cover the entire period of his adulthood, from law school graduation in 1886 to his death in 1938. Containing newspaper clippings, copies of correspondence, published reports, and other printed matter, the scrapbooks document Hamlin's political interests, law practice, and service with the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve Board. The scrapbooks have been abstracted and indexed, with a special index prepared for those items concerning Woodrow Wilson's presidential administration. The scrapbooks are available on microfilm only. Items removed from the scrapbooks by the Federal Reserve Board in the summer of 1941 were filed separately from the scrapbooks when they were returned and have not been microfilmed.

Hamlin's diaries chronicle his business and political careers as well as his social life. Topics covered parallel and augment those documented in his scrapbooks. The diaries have also been indexed.

The Correspondence series includes letters exchanged between Hamlin and his wife, Huybertie Pruyn Hamlin, during the years 1900-1934 and general correspondence from 1869 through 1955. It contains a considerable number of letters from presidents Grover Cleveland, Herbert Hoover, William McKinley, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, William H. Taft, and Woodrow Wilson, as well as exchanges with other figures, such as Newton Diehl Baker, Frances Folsom Cleveland, Josephus Daniels, Cordell Hull, Robert Lansing, Henry Cabot Lodge, William Gibbs McAdoo, Levi P. Morton, and George Foster Peabody. Most of the letters contain political discussion and comments on Democratic party leaders and policies of the Cleveland, Wilson, and Franklin D. Roosevelt administrations, particularly those issues affecting the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve System. A list of major correspondents is included as an appendix to this register.

Anna Hamlin was the only daughter of Charles and Huybertie Pruyn Hamlin. Her scrapbooks and diaries are organized in separate series and mainly concern social life in Washington, D.C., from about 1915 until her death in 1925. References to Anna in her father's diaries and scrapbooks have also been indexed in a separate volume that is filed in the Indexes to Scrapbooks series. Anna Hamlin's scrapbooks are available on microfilm only.

The Miscellany series contains copies of two unpublished manuscripts by Huybertie Pruyn Hamlin, "Some Memories of Franklin Delano Roosevelt" and "Visit at the White House, November 1941-January 1942." In the first manuscript, Huybertie Hamlin described the longtime friendship among the Roosevelt, Hamlin, and Pruyn families which began early in her childhood. The latter manuscript is an intimate account of her social visits to the White House during the critical period just before the country's entry into World War II at a time when Winston Churchill and other prominent leaders were also guests there. She was, for instance, a witness to the signing of the "Declaration by the United Nations" on January 2, 1942. The originals of both of her manuscripts are in the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library at Hyde Park, New York. Another of her autobiographical narratives, "Memories of Washington from the Age of Seven," begun in 1929 and completed in 1934, is an informal account of social life mainly from 1913 to 1934. Also included is a satiric poem, "As to the British Embassy Garden Party June 1939," probably also written by her.

Charles S. Hamlin's history of the Federal Reserve Board used extracts from his diaries and other records from March 1913 to January 1929 but is incomplete and ends abruptly in midsentence. A folder containing extracts from diary volumes fourteen and fifteen also includes a March 1968 note to Federal Reserve Board Governor Andrew Felton Brimmer concerning the rate reduction determined by the Board for the Chicago Reserve Bank in 1927.

Biographical notes on Charles S. Hamlin and genealogical information on the Hamlin family are included in the Miscellany series, as well as correspondence, reports, and drafts of legislation pertaining to the 1913 federal income tax law, statistical material and pamphlet files of the Federal Reserve System, 1907-1917, and speeches given by Hamlin between 1897 and 1937. An unpublished report concerning an investigation of customs laws and refunds of duties at the New York customs house was submitted in 1893 to John G. Carlisle, Secretary of the Treasury, by Charles S. Fairchild, chairman of the Fairchild Commission on Hat Material Refunds. The series also contains a photograph of Hamlin and an original cartoon drawn by Sebastian T. Robles for the "National Gallery" series in the Washington Post and published on July 12, 1934. The Robles cartoon is an attachment to correspondence from William Haggard, assistant managing editor of the Post.

The Addition, 1942-1997, includes letters written to Huybertie Pruyn Hamlin and newspaper clippings. The correspondence was written between 1942 and 1962, chiefly by Edith Benham Helm, White House social secretary, concerning personal and social matters and politics.

Organization of the Papers

The collection is arranged in nine series:

• Charles S. Hamlin Diaries, 1887-1937
• Index-digest of Charles S. Hamlin Diaries, 1887-1936
• Charles S. Hamlin Scrapbooks, 1886-1938
• Indexes to Scrapbooks, 1898-1934
• Anna Hamlin Scrapbooks, 1898-1928
• Anna Hamlin Diaries, 1918-1924
• Correspondence, 1869-1955
• Miscellany, 1879-1968
• Addition, 1942-1997

Container List

The following is a list of major correspondents represented in the General Correspondence file.

Adams, Charles Francis

Agassiz, Elizabeth Cabot Cary

Asser, Sir John

Asser, Lady Leila

Baker, Newton Diehl

Baker, Ray Stannard

Baldwin, Stanley

Barnes, James A.

Brandeis, Louis Dembitz

Brooks, Van Wyck

Bryan, Mary B.

Bryan, William Jennings

Burleson, Albert S.

Burnett, Frances Hodgson

Butler, Nicholas Murray

Butler, Sigourney

Carter, James C.

Chamberlain, Beatrice

Clarke, John H.

Cleveland, Frances Folsom

See also Frances Folsom Cleveland Preston

Cleveland, Grover

Cleveland, Rose Elizabeth

Coolidge, Grace Goodhue

Daniels, Josephus

Davis, John W.

Davis, Norman H.

Dawes, Charles Gates

Draper, William F.

Everett, William

Fairchild, Charles S.

Fitzgerald, John F.

Foster, John W.

Goldsborough, Arthur

Gregory, Thomas West

Haggard, William

Harmon, Judson

Hart, Albert Bushnell

Hay, John

Higginson, Henry Lee

Hitchcock, G. M.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

Hoover, Herbert

Houston, David F.

Howe, Julia Ward

Hull, Cordell

Hull, Frances

Hunt, Gaillard

Jewett, Sarah Orne

Johnston, Harriet Lane

Jordan, David S.

Kellogg, Frank B.

Lamont, Daniel S.

Lane, Franklin K.

Lansing, Robert

Lodge, Henry Cabot (1850-1924)

Marshall, Thomas R.

McAdoo, William Gibbs

McKinley, William

McReynolds, James Clarke

Mellon, Andrew W.

Meredith, E. T.

Morton, Levi P.

Olney, Richard

Owen, Robert L.

Peabody, George Foster

Peyton, J. N.

Preston, Frances Folsom Cleveland

See also Frances Folsom Cleveland

Pruyn, Robert C.

Putnam, Herbert

Reid, Whitelaw

Sherman, John

Sherwood, Robert E.

Spring Rice, Sir Cecil

Spring Rice, Lady Florence

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

Roosevelt, Theodore (1858-1919)

Stone, Harlan Fiske

Storey, Moorfield

Taft, William H. (1857-1930)

Takahira, Kogoro, Baron

Van Horne, Sir William

Warren, Charles

Warren, Nancy

Weeks, John

White, Henry

Wilson, Eleanor Randolph

Wilson, Woodrow

Young, Owen D.