Hagar Family Papers

The Hagar family letters include Sarah's personal correspondence with her family in Burlington, and a few letters from other members of the family. There are letters from Westover, Virginia; Westerne, Maryland; Newburg, Indiana; Burlington, Vermont; and a large group from Europe. Many of the letters are undated and unsigned. The earliest known letter in the collection is from 1840 and the last from 1880. Perhaps the primary importance of the collection is the description of the nineteenth-century American family which filters through the correspondence. Some of the letters describe the conditions and attitudes of the pre-Civil-War South in the critical decade before 1865, and others the manners and habits of the European aristocracy at the time of the Franco-Prussian War.

The letters are arranged chronologically under two subject headings: American Letters (1840-1867) and European Letters (1868-1880). Sarah's letters are mixed with those of other correspondents because it didn't seem feasible to group them separately. There is some confusion as to the origin of many of the American letters; Millwood, Vue de l'Eau and Westover all refer to the positions Sarah held in Virginia and Marlborough and Westerne refer to that in Maryland.