Just 23 weeks to publication. This week I’m featuring another Virginia repository, the Special Collections Resource Center at William & Mary, where I was on the faculty for more than 15 years. And where I simultaneously appreciated and could never spend enough time in special collections.
And I’m choosing to do a little tidbit on James Monroe. In Lineage I wrote a lot about the “Founders” interest in genealogy (and I have written elsewhere, too, on Washington–you can find links on my “elsewhere” page).
Among the materials at W&M are papers of the 5th president, James Monroe. William & Mary also holds Monroe’s home, Highland, very near to Monticello and Charlottesville. And the Papers of James Monroe Project is at the University of Mary Washington just up the road (well, quite a bit, in Fredericksburg, but near enough). This combination allows for interesting interpretive work on Monroe, including with descendant families of those he enslaved–a project ongoing at Highland. A much larger set of Monroe Papers are at the Library of Congress, with a pretty complex (dis)organization reflecting the extent of the collection.
Like every founder, Monroe was interested in ancestry. As were family members in the later 19th century. Among the materials in the papers at W&M are this later (see the featured image) 19th century reconstruction of the Kortright family. Elizabeth Kortright (1768-1830) married James Monroe in 1786 when she was not yet 18. The Monroes fall just at the end of the period I study in Lineage, but the connections between how 18th and then 19th century Americans were interested in and invested in genealogy is of course a continuing fascination.
One of the reasons I love doing these little posts is that I learn so much, returning to libraries I’ve worked in before, or collections I have much more to learn about. Every researcher will understand that behind a paragraph or two is hours of exploration!