Scope and Content Note
The papers of Vinnie Ream (1847-1914) and Richard Leveridge Hoxie (1844-1930) span the years 1853-1937, with the bulk of the material concentrated in the period 1853-1914. They include correspondence, memoranda, commissions, biographical data, writings, scrapbooks, reports, notebooks, printed matter, and miscellaneous material. The focus is on Ream after she successfully competed for the commission to execute the statue of Abraham Lincoln that now stands in the rotunda of the United States Capitol. Other topics include racial conditions after the Civil War and social life in Washington, D.C., during Reconstruction.
A smaller portion of the collection focuses on Richard L. Hoxie and deals mainly with military and engineering matters, including Hoxie's Civil War service, participation in the Wheeler Expedition of 1872, and career in the United States Army Corps of Engineers. Of special importance are two notebooks he kept while on the Wheeler Expedition. Also in the collection is a map said to have been carried by William T. Sherman on his march to the sea during the Civil War.
Among the prominent correspondents are George Caleb Bingham, Elias A. Boudinot, Georg Morris Cohen Brandes, Olivia Briggs, Ezra Cornell, Elizabeth Bacon Custer, Jubal Anderson Early, G. P. A. Healey, Joaquin Miller, Crosby Stuart Noyes, Albert Pike, David D. Porter, James S. Rollins, Edmund G. Ross, Alexander Robey Shepherd, William T. Sherman, Thaddeus Stevens, and Daniel W. Voorhees.