Scope and Content Note
The Rodgers Family Papers span the years 1740-1987, with the bulk of the collection covering the period 1804-1932. Although many family members are represented in the collection, the primary figures are John Rodgers (1773-1838) and his wife Minerva Denison Rodgers, their daughter Ann Minerva ("Nannie") Rodgers Macomb, their granddaughters Christina Macomb and Nannie R. Macomb, and their great-grandson Alexander Macomb. Other correspondents include Louisa Rodgers Meigs, her husband Montgomery C. Meigs, and their children.
The division of the Rodgers Family Papers into four parts containing material covering the same period is due to the provenance and administrative status of the collection. All parts contain both correspondence and miscellaneous notebooks, journals, accounts, and other documents. Since the series overlap topically and chronologically, it is necessary to consult all parts in order to find the correspondence of a given person. This is particularly true for John and Minerva D. Rodgers. Parts I and II contain significant amounts of their correspondence with each other and with other members of the family. Rodgers's general correspondence, mostly from other navy personnel, is scattered among the parts. The collection also contains letters received by Christina and Nannie R. Macomb, Minerva Macomb Peters and Thomas Willing Peters, Commodore John Rodgers, and others from individuals outside the family.
The major portions of Part I and Part II consist of family correspondence. Letters between John and Minerva D. Rodgers for the period 1804 to 1837 documents their daily lives, his while serving or commanding ships on various cruises and hers at home at Sion Hill, the family home at Havre de Grace, Maryland, or in Washington, D.C., where the Rodgerses maintained a home after 1815 on the river at Greenleaf Point in the southwest section of the city and later on Lafayette Square.
The periods 1804-1815 and 1825-1827 are particularly well represented in this correspondence. From 1804 to 1806, John Rodgers was often in command of the naval squadron in the Mediterranean during hostilities and negotiations with the Barbary States. Minerva Rodgers maintained the home at Sion Hill during 1807-1810 while her husband was in command of the New York Naval Station and a flotilla patrolling the east coast of the United States to enforce the nation's embargo policies. During 1811-1815, Rodgers encountered the British sloop Little Belt off the Virginia coast and had other adventures associated with the War of 1812. In 1826-1827, he again commanded a fleet in the Mediterranean, his last command at sea. Before and after this interlude, he spent his time mainly in Washington, D.C., as president of the Navy Board of Commissioners, a post to which he had been appointed by President James Madison in 1815.
There are also letters from the Rodgerses to their children, particularly from Minerva Rodgers to their daughters Louisa Rodgers Meigs and Ann Minerva ("Nannie") Rodgers Macomb. Two letters written to her children tell of the loss of her son Henry (“Hal”) Rodgers with the ship Albany in 1854 and of sentiment in the capital city after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865. Another son, John Rodgers (1812-1882), one of the first officers in the United States Navy to attain the rank of rear admiral, is represented in this collection by his correspondence with his parents and some of his brothers and sisters. The bulk of his papers, however, as well as those of his son, William L. Rodgers, also a rear admiral, and his grandnephew, John Rodgers (1881-1926), a naval aviator, are in the Library's Rodgers Family Papers in the Naval Historical Foundation Collection.
A large amount of correspondence is from Meigs and Macomb relatives, who constitute the “army branches” of the family. Two of the daughters of John Rodgers married army officers and their sons were also army officers. Ann Minerva (“Nannie”) Rodgers married John Navarre Macomb of the department of topographical engineers, who was sent to the new territory of New Mexico in the 1850s and wrote frequently to his wife telling of his experiences there. His correspondence for the Civil War period is also noteworthy. The family later resided in Cincinnati, Ohio, where John Macomb was engaged in building a bridge over the Ohio River, and in Rock Island, Illinois, where he worked on a bridge over the Mississippi River.
Life in the territory of Wyoming in the 1880s is documented in the correspondence of Minerva Macomb Peters, a daughter of “Nannie” and John Macomb. After her marriage in 1881 to Thomas Willing Peters, she journeyed to Wyoming with her husband where he raised cattle. In 1889, he obtained an appointment in the consular service at Plauen in the state of Saxony, Germany, and the family left the United States to settle in Europe. The letters Minerva Macomb Peters wrote to her parents in the 1890s reflect a different type of life from that which she had encountered in Wyoming. The Peters's sons, John and Evelyn, continued to correspond with the Macomb family after their mother's death in 1898 and are represented in the collection by their letters written to their aunts, Nannie R. and Christina Macomb, up to 1945. Alexander Macomb, a grandson of “Nannie” and John Macomb, wrote of his life in the navy, mainly during peacetime, in letters to his mother, Ella Chelle McKeldon Macomb, during the period 1911-1932. He describes events, situations, duties, and persons encountered during a career that took him all over the world.
Included in the correspondence of the Meigs branch of the family are letters from Montgomery C. Meigs to his parents, Charles D. and Mary M. Meigs of Philadelphia, and to his wife, Louisa Rodgers Meigs. Correspondence of their children, Montgomery Meigs, a civil engineer who settled in Keokuk, Iowa, and Mary Meigs Taylor, who married Army Colonel Joseph Hancock Taylor, is also among the family papers.
The largest group of general correspondence is that received by Commodore John Rodgers. Although some is found in Part I, the bulk is contained in Part II and Part III. Writing on subjects concerned mainly with Rodgers's activities in the navy, the correspondents include early naval figures such as William Bainbridge, Samuel Barron, Stephen Decatur, Isaac Hull, Matthew Calbraith Perry, Oliver Hazard Perry, David Porter, Samuel L. Southard, Robert Traill Spence, Benjamin Stoddert, and John Trippe. There are also letters from Tobias Lear in 1805 relating to negotiations with the Barbary States at the time that Lear was the American minister negotiating with the Barbary powers and Rodgers was commander of the navy squadron in the Mediterranean. Letters from Lear in later years and from his wife Frances D. Lear to Minerva Rodgers after Tobias Lear's death are also included. Of a more personal nature are letters between John Rodgers and Ann Pinkney in 1804 when, as Rodgers's personal emissary, she kept him apprised of Minerva Denison while he was at sea.
The collection also contains miscellaneous papers in Parts I, II, and III relating to the navy and to ships commanded by Rodgers. This material includes documents relating to courts of enquiry and the court-martialing of various men under Rodgers's command. Of particular note are letterbooks and order books for the period of Rodgers's tenure as head of the New York Navy Yard and as commander of the Constitution (frigate) and the North Carolina (ship-of-the-line). There are also logbooks and journals kept on board the Constitution, the President (frigate), and the North Carolina, while they were under his command. A journal for the President, 1811-1813, was maintained by Matthew C. Perry, who is also represented by correspondence and by a journal of the Concord (sloop-of-war) under his command, 1831-1832.
Other miscellaneous material includes biographical notes on John and Minerva Rodgers; recollections or memoirs of Minerva Rodgers and Nannie Rodgers Macomb; notebooks, diaries, and school composition books; a recollection of an account which had been passed down in the family of a visit of Tobias Lear to John Rodgers on the eve of Lear's death in 1816; and an account of the sickness and death of William Kimble, a seaman on the President in 1813, who was said to have awakened from death twice during the course of his final illness.
Part IV consists of additions to the collection. Addition I includes correspondence, diaries, biographical material, financial and legal papers, printed matter, and other miscellaneous items. Of particular significance is Nannie R. Macomb's diary which chronicles Washington, D.C., social life in the period 1883 to 1888. Prominent correspondents include Oliver Wendell Holmes, Douglas MacArthur, and Daniel Webster. Addition II contains personal papers of Alexander Macomb, a naval officer, including biographical material, correspondence, estate and financial records, and material relating to real estate. The correspondence consists primarily of family letters written to Macomb.