Items

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  Bigelow Letters

  This website is an interactive version of a card-based index to over 20,000 letters in the John Bigelow Collection housed in the Special Collections Department of Schaffer Library, Union College.
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  Hiram S. Wilson Civil War Letters

  This collection contains letters written by Hiram S. Wilson to his wife, Elizabeth, from 1861 to 1864 with the majority of the letters dating between 1862 and 1863. While most letters were addressed to his wife, there are a few letters written to other family members including his daughter, Stella. Most of the letters were written while he was stationed at various army camps in Virginia and Maryland. He writes about family and home issues but also talks about military activities. Wilson expresses confidence about the army’s abilities and writes about his trust in General McClellan and other Generals. He includes discussions about camp life, troop movement, and general war news. For instance, several letters discuss the passage by Congress of the Militia Act of 1862 and the Confiscation Act of 1862 that allowed the enlistment of African Americans.
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  Jane Bigelow Diaries

  The diaries of Jane Tunis Poultney Bigelow (1829-1889) are found in the John Bigelow papers (SCA 0022) in the department of Special Collections and Archives in Union College's Schaffer Library. Even though Jane was a dedicated wife and mother, she was fiercely independent and was just as respected and loved as her husband in literary and social circles in the United States and Europe. She was a gracious and energetic hostess to Charles Dickens and Oscar Wilde during their visits to New York, and her visits with Walt Whitman, Wilkie Collins, and William Thackeray were wildly successful as she charmed and entertained her guests with her high intelligence, wit, and unconventional language. A gifted writer and speaker, she published prose under the pen name of Jenny P. Bigelow and spoke several languages fluently. Part of the Diaries and Journals (1850 - 1911) series, Jane's diaries detail her life and travels from 1850 to 1873 and make up the majority of the Diaries and Journals series.
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  Jewish Women Postcards

  This collection contains North African Postcards of Jewish women, children, and families dating back to the early 20th Century. The demographic dispersion of Jews is generally described in three categories: Ashkenazi, Sephardi and Mizrahi. While Ashkenazi Jews make up the majority of world Jewry, the Feingold Postcard Collection focuses mainly on Jewish populations living in North Africa, which consisted of a combination of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews. The term Sephardi designates the diaspora of Jewish people from Spain who migrated to Mediterranean regions, such as France and North Africa. Mizrahi Jews, on the other hand, originated in Persia and diverse locales in the Middle East and moved eastward. Mizrahi Jews were often seen as outsiders by both natives and other sects of Jews because they had dark skin, spoke different languages and had different customs.
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  John McConihe Collection

  This collection contains primarily letters written by Captain John McConihe to his business partner, John B. Kellog. The letters date from April 1, 1862 to May 21, 1864. The letters give descriptions of military maneuvers, people and places he encountered during his military service, camp life, his finances, his duties as an officer, his health and his recovery from a shoulder wound sustained at Shiloh. There are some receipts that detail purchases he made during his military service. The collection also contains a carte-de-visite or small photograph of McConihe and one of his calling cards.
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  The Butler Family Letters

  The collection consists primarily of correspondence between William Butler and his family during the Civil War. His letters began in 1861 when he was sailing to Annapolis on a troop ship and continue until his death in August 1864. Some months he wrote almost daily while others he wrote sporadically. His letters document the everyday concerns of a Civil War soldier including life, death, health, clothing, money and liquor. The majority of the letters are written to William’s brother Edmund with his other brother James and his sister Margaret appearing occasionally.
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  The Westinghouse Family Papers

  The papers of the Westinghouse Family date from 1833-1913, with the bulk of the material falling between 1862 and 1880. The collection includes: correspondence; legal documents such as mortgages, warranty deeds, agreements, leases and patent information; photographs; drawings; a pocket diary and autograph book. The bulk of the collection is family correspondence. The majority of these letters were written by Albert Westinghouse to his family while he was serving in the military during the Civil War. The pocket diary belonged to Albert Westinghouse. The diary dates from January 30 until October 10, 1864. His entries are concise, writing about daily military life including mail from home, inspection, clothing, marches, new recruits, drilling, etc.
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  Union College Civil War Era Patriotic Envelopes

  This collection comprises a series of unmailed Civil War-era patriotic envelopes or covers that was presented to Union College by John M. Pearson. The patriotic covers featured in this collection primarily depict themes supporting the Northern or Union cause. This includes political cartoons and caricatures of patriotic symbols and political messages both for and against the Northern and Southern leaders of the time. The first patriotic covers appeared in 1861 as commercial printing houses seized the opportunity to publish and sell these novelties as commentary on both sides of the conflict. However, production was relatively short lived as the printing of Confederate covers dropped by 1863 while the Union covers lasted only one year longer.
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  Union College Postcards

  This website provides a glimpse of the many kinds of unique cultural resources held among the library collections at Union College in Schenectady, New York. Founded in 1795, Union College was the first college chartered by the state’s Board of Regents and is situated in a campus that was the first in the nation to have been designed according to a comprehensive architectural and landscape plan.