George Perkins Marsh Collection

The George Perkins Marsh Papers are a combination of various donations, beginning with one made by Caroline Crane Marsh in the late 1880's. The largest part of the collection, the papers of George P. Marsh himself, has been arranged in the following order: correspondence; diaries, notebooks; printed material; and notes, lists, and miscellaneous manuscripts and memorabilia. The correspondence consists mainly of incoming letters, with some copies of outgoing correspondence. Prominent persons represented in this section include: Spencer Baird; George Bancroft; Frederick Billings; Rufus Choate; Henry Clay; Guiseppe Garibaldi; Ulysses S. Grant; Joseph Henry; Andrew Johnson; Charles Coffin Jewett; Justin S. Morill; Carl Christian Rafn; and Frederick Wislizenus, among others. A card index has been prepared for the correspondence and has been placed at the end of the manuscript catalogue in the reading room. Letters to Marsh are indexed only by name of author, while outgoing correspondence (including many post-1882 letters by Caroline Crane Marsh and other family members) is indexed by name of both author and recipient (with recipient cards marked with an "R" in the upper right hand corner). The Marsh diaries date from the period 1864-82, while the notebooks range over such topics as English and foreign languages, scrapbooks, visiting lists and address books and natural history. The printed items are largely copies of Marsh's own writings, from The Camel to Man and Nature. The last section consists of loose notes taken by Marsh for his writings, note cards and bibliographical lists of books in the Marsh library (purchased for UVM by Frederick Billings after Marsh's death), miscellaneous manuscripts and various memorabilia such as medals, diplomatic pouches and certificates of award.

The Caroline Crane Marsh section of the collection, largely the gift of David Lowenthal in 1958-59, has been arranged separately at the end of the Papers, in the following order: correspondence; printed material; manuscripts of Mrs. Marsh's poetry; translations and other writings (including the unpublished Volume Two of her Life and Letters of George Perkins Marsh); and diaries from the years 1851 to 1880. Much of the correspondence in this second section duplicates letters in the latter portions of the correspondence in the George Perkins Marsh section, and consequently is not included in the card index.

With the exception of no-date papers, which have been arranged alphabetically by author or subject, the entire collection is in chronological order within each of the various sections.

Other, less substantial holdings of Marsh papers exist at Dartmouth College, the Vermont Historical Society, the Smithsonian Institution, and the National Archives. See page 387-90 of David Lowenthal's George Perkins Marsh: Versatile Vermonter for a list of manuscript collections containing Marsh material.