Missing Letters and New Discoveries: Editing the Addendum Series at The Papers of George Washington
by Dr. Adrina M. Garbooshian-Huggins, Research Assistant Professor and Associate Editor & Dr. Benjamin L. Huggins, Research Associate Professor and Associate Editor
The discovery of previously unknown documents in George Washington’s correspondence is an exciting aspect of serving as an editor of his papers. Recently the project established a digital volume to pull all these newly discovered documents into one location in our digital edition of Washington’s papers (https://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/founders/GEWN.html). Dr. Garbooshian-Huggins is the prime editor of these documents.
Our goal is to produce the first comprehensive edition of Washington’s papers
In the 1970s and 1980s, Papers of George Washington project editors gathered photocopies of Washington incoming and outgoing correspondence located in various repositories around the country and the world, including the Library of Congress, historical societies, state archives, libraries, museums, etc. Our goal is to produce the first comprehensive edition of Washington’s papers (previous editions published only his outgoing letters). We produce highly accurate transcriptions of the documents and provide cross references and notes that contextualize the documents for readers of our volumes (https://washingtonpapers.org/editions/letterpress/). We have divided the volumes into series covering distinct chronological periods in Washington’s life. To date, in addition to six volumes of Washington’s diaries, we have completed the Colonial Series (1748–1775) in ten volumes; the Confederation Series (1784–1788) in six volumes; the Presidential Series (1788-1797) in twenty-one volumes; and the Retirement Series (1797-1799) in four volumes. The Revolutionary War Series (1775-1783) is still ongoing with thirty of a planned forty-two volumes completed. All completed documents also appear in the previously mentioned digital edition and many of these can also be accessed at the National Archives’ Founders Online, a free website (https://www.founders.archives.gov).
Filling in these gaps is exciting because the newly discovered letters often shed light on Washington’s world, and we (and our readers) learn new things about Washington and his correspondents.
Although our document-gathering effort was quite comprehensive, we sometimes find references in the letters to unknown letters either to or from Washington. We call these documents letters not found. For these, we create a place-holder entry in the volume and these placeholders appear in the digital edition as well. Filling in these gaps is exciting because the newly discovered letters often shed light on Washington’s world, and we (and our readers) learn new things about Washington and his correspondents.
To fill in these gaps in Washington’s correspondence we monitor auction websites and stay in touch with document collectors/sellers, museums, archives, and libraries about their newly obtained Washington documents. When a previously unknown or unfound letter is brought to our attention, we catalog, transcribe, and annotate it, and add it to the newly discovered and omitted documents volume in our digital edition. We are particularly grateful to Nathan Raab for alerting us to his new document discoveries over the years.
There remain many, many letters not found in the Washington correspondence. A quick count in our digital edition reveals that we have identified over 3,000 such documents that have not yet been located. Two examples of interesting documents that are still out there are, first, the remaining fragments of Washington’s draft first inaugural address, a lengthy preliminary version of that speech. (He delivered a much shorter version). In the early nineteenth century Harvard professor Jared Sparks, the first editor of Washington’s papers, cut it into souvenir fragments which he handed out to visitors. We have quite a few of the fragments, but many remain to be found. Any unknown letters between Washington and his wife Martha would be precious discoveries. Only a few of these are known because Martha destroyed almost all of them after George’s death. Some others may still be out there and would be an extremely rare and valuable find.
