The Stewart-Swift Research Center manuscript collection consists of personal and family papers of Addison County residents: records of local businesses, organizations, churches, schools, and towns; account books of farmers, lawyers, merchants, and doctors; and diaries by local men and women. The collection covers diverse subjects including: art and architecture; agriculture; labor; dairy, marble and other local industries; education and Middlebury College history; religion; politics; temperance; anti-slavery and colonization societies; recreation and tourism; medicine; the War of 1812, the Civil War, and World War I; women’s history; Addison County genealogy; and more.
Some of the manuscripts are deeply personal, such as the ten year correspondence between Emma Seymour and Philip Battell, while they were secretly engaged. Some are business focused, such as the account book of a tavern, where you can see not only what people drank and with whom they socialized, but also what goods they purchased. Statistical analysis of twenty years of criminal case files of the Addison Municipal Court, 1917-1939, might reveal judicial trends or turn up social dramas. Among recent additions, there are records of the Addison County MedicalSociety, 1835-2013, that provide insight into local medical practices over several decades and Dr. Pete Society Records, 2002-2012, that document activities of a non-profit organization funded in honor of a beloved local pediatrician, Dr. Wayne Peters.
Letters: The collection also includes over 30,000 individually cataloged letters by missionaries, merchants, women woolen mill workers, lawyers, educators; Civil War, World War I and World War II soldiers, and other area residents from the 18th into the 20th centuries. A card catalog index to these letters was created as a WPA project during 1930s and is available in the Research Center. Please note that the more recent archival acquisitions that include correspondence, such as the voluminous Stewart Swift collection, are not part of the card catalog index. These letters may be examined through the online catalog and through individual finding aids available at the Research Center.
How to Find
The majority of manuscripts are searchable through the online catalog and a limited number of published finding aids. The book, Treasures Gathered Here (E.H. Dow, 1991), and unpublished inventories to selected collections provide additional information and are available in the Research Center.
