Elisha Bartlett family papers

The Bartlett Family Papers span the years from 1733 to 1924, with the bulk of the collection falling into the thirty-year period from 1832 to 1862. The papers consist of 4 boxes containing a total of approximately 510 items, of which 360 items are letters and approximately 150 items are manuscript materials including family related manuscripts, financial and legal materials, and miscellaneous items of printed ephemera. The collection contains a significant amount of material related to the medical career of Elisha Bartlett from 1832 to 1855, and the activities of Walter Otis Bartlett, Captain 1st Rhode Island Artillery, in the Civil War during 1861 to 1862. The collection also contained some printed pamphlet materials relating to Elisha Bartlett which were removed for cataloguing purposes. See register below for a listing of these printed materials.

The correspondence in the collection relating to Elisha Bartlett consists of approximately 41 letters from and 180 letters to him. Approximately 93 letters to, from, or about Elisha Bartlett are to or from correspondents listed in the Dictionary of American Biography. Twenty-five of these correspondents are physicians, surgeons, or chemists, including: Nathan Allen, Gurdon Buck, John William Draper, Benjamin Winslow Dudley, Pliny Earle, John Orne Green, Samuel David Gross, Elisha Huntington, Edward Jarvis, Joseph Johnson, Gilman Kimball, Leonidas Merion Lawson, Charles Alfred Lee, Reubin Dimond Mussey, William Osler, Martyn Paine, B.R. Palmer, Willard Parker, Robert Peter, Benjamin Silliman Jr., Nathan Ryno Smith, Alexander Hodgdon Stevens, Edward Livingston Trudeau, David Wendell Yandell, and Lunsford Pitts Yandell.

The bulk of the medically related correspondence is from physicians holding teaching posts at universities where Elisha Bartlett taught. The latter correspondence consists mainly of factual material relating to the yearly business of the universities.

There are a few letters to or from members of the Bartlett family including Elisha Bartlett's wife, Elizabeth Slater Bartlett. In addition, this correspondence includes 21 letters from his brother William Osborn Bartlett, a lawyer, mostly in connection with legal business.

Other notable correspondents in the collection include: Charles Butler, Caleb Cushing, John Davis, Charles Dickens, Alexander Hill Everett, James Thomas Fields, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, William Chauncy Langdon, Henry Cabot Lodge, William Brown Maclay, Robert Treat Paine, Thomas Wren Ward, Catherine Ann Ware Warfield, T.L. Woodruff, and Jeffries Wyman.

Walter Otis Bartlett was born on October 18, 1836, the son of Otis Bartlett and his second wife Waity(?) Allen Bartlett. He apparently served in the Union Army as a Captain of the 1st Rhode Island Artillery during 1861 and 1862. Further biographical information on Walter Otis Bartlett is found in his letters in the family correspondence.

The correspondence in the collection relating to Walter Otis Bartlett consists of 60 letters from him to members of the Bartlett family. The bulk of this correspondence is addressed to Bartlett's sister Caroline Bartlett Brown. Most of the remainder of his letters are addressed to another sister, Rebecca Bartlett Brown.

The Walter Otis Bartlett letters in the collection include significant but not necessarily large amounts of information on the following subjects: Bartlett's fellow officers in the war, the Battle of Bull Run, the troops' and officers' perceptions of political events in Washington, D.C., and Bartlett's attempt to resign from the Army.

The researcher should refer to the 'Box and Folder Identification' section for a description of the contents of each folder in the collection. The letters of notable correspondents as listed above are indexed in the correspondence catalog in the Department of Rare Books, Special Collections and Preservation.