Scope and Content Note
The papers of William Dudley Foulke (1848-1935) span the years circa 1470-1952, with the majority of the papers concentrated in the period 1868-1935. The first series in the Foulke Papers, consisting of diaries and related material, 1867-1872, mainly concerns European, Egyptian, and Holy Land travels by Foulke, Arthur Middleton Reeves, and Mark E. Reeves, and a copybook kept by the Shoemaker family in 1825. The Family Correspondence series, 1791-1934, contains letters exchanged between members of the interrelated Foulke, Reeves, Cates, and Shoemaker families.
The largest and most important series in the papers is the General Correspondence of William Dudley Foulke. Dated from 1868 to 1935, Foulke's correspondence reflects his public and literary careers. Of particular interest are letters from Theodore Roosevelt discussing civil service reform, the Progressive Movement, Woodrow Wilson, the World Court, pacifism, and other topics. There is also a large number of letters from Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt. Among Foulke's other correspondents are Charles Francis Adams, Jane Addams, George Ade, Alvey A. Adee, Felix Adler, Susan B. Anthony, Albert Jeremiah Beveridge, Henry Brown Blackwell, Charles J. Bonaparte, Claude Gernade Bowers, Viscount James Bryce, Nicholas Murray Butler, Richard Henry Dana, Max Eastman, Charles William Eliot, Charles W. Fairbanks, John Fiske, James Rudolph Garfield, Richard Watson Gilder, Edwin Lawrence Godkin, Samuel Gompers, Lady Gregory, Walter Quintin Gresham, John Hays Hammond, Marcus Alonzo Hanna, Benjamin Harrison, Albert Bushnell Hart, John Hay, Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Herbert Hoover, O. O. Howard, Julia Ward Howe, Harold L. Ickes, Robert Green Ingersoll, J. Franklin Jameson, Hiram Johnson, David Starr Jordan, George Kennan, Robert M. La Follette, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, Henry Charles Lea, Henry Cabot Lodge, Seth Low, Samuel S. McClure, William McKinley, S. Weir Mitchell, Thomas Nelson Page, Walter Hines Page, William Lyon Phelps, Gifford Pinchot, Thomas Reed, James Whitcomb Riley, Elihu Root, Charles Edward Russell, Carl Schurz, Albert Shaw, Ainsworth Rand Spofford, Lucy Stone, Moorfield Storey, William H. Taft, Oswald Garrison Villard, Lew Wallace, Booker T. Washington, Andrew Dickson White, William Allen White, and Woodrow Wilson.
The Subject File and the Speeches and Writings File include a variety of material related principally to state and federal civil service reform. The Financial Papers and the Miscellany series consist of family items including two scrapbooks kept by Foulke's daughter, Mary Foulke Morrisson. The final item in the papers is a late fifteenth century fragment of the Tristram Saga obtained by Arthur Middleton Reeves on a trip to Iceland.