Scope and Content Note
The papers of Edmund Cody Burnett (1864-1949) span the years 1765-1967, with the focus on his role as editor of Letters of Members of the Continental Congress between 1907 and 1936. The papers are divided into five series: Correspondence , Writings File , Miscellany , Letters Project File , and an Addition .
During his tenure (1907-1936) in the Department of Historical Research at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Burnett edited the eight-volume work, Letters of Members of the Continental Congress, and wrote a narrative history, The Continental Congress. Under the general guidance of department director J. Franklin Jameson, Burnett's Letters ranked among the department's most significant contributions to the field of documentary editing. The Correspondence series traces the development of the editorial project over thirty years and contains numerous examples of Burnett's endeavors to locate manuscript resources relevant to his research. His efforts to trace and precisely define eighteenth-century modes of expression and colloquialisms produced a wealth of incidental background information. Correspondence with Dumas Malone, editor of the Dictionary of American Biography (DAB), and with Waldo Gifford Leland discuss both the content and style of Burnett's writings for the DAB, the Continental Congress project, and his book reviews and articles. Other correspondents include R. D. W. Connor, Max Farrand, Charles Earle Funk, J. Franklin Jameson, Arthur Deerin Call, and Charles Oscar Paullin.
The Correspondence series also reveals Burnett's interest in farming and agrarian issues. Detailed letters to his farm managers and family members, especially during his long absences while working in Washington, D.C., document the operation of the Burnett family's vegetable and cattle farm in northeastern Tennessee. Other subjects discussed include Burnett's concerns about the environmental impact of the Tennessee Valley Authority projects and the economic effects of New Deal government farm programs. Throughout the collection, from Burnett's earliest to last years, there are examples of his profound respect for the simplicity and beauty of nature.
The Writings File consists primarily of Burnett's articles about Tennessee local history and edited collections of Civil War-era correspondence of the Burnett, Cody, Lightfoot, and McGarity families. The original letters published in these collected editions have been filed in the nineteenth-century portion of the Correspondence series. The Writings File does not contain all of Burnett's published works, and less than half of it pertains to the Continental Congress.
The Miscellany series relates chiefly to Tennessee local history and family history and genealogy. Included are several nineteenth-century legal documents, as well as a small group of speeches presented by Burnett at meetings of the Palaver Club of Washington, D.C., and the Agricultural History Society of America.
The Letters Project File series comprises Burnett's research files from the Letters of Members of the Continental Congress project. The series consists largely of transcribed, photostatic, and printer's copies of original letters and documents found by Burnett and his staff in public repositories and private collections. Not all of the documents collected by Burnett appeared in the project's published volumes. Although Burnett made printer's copies from most of the photostatic copies, others were to have been included in a supplemental volume that was never completed. The series also contains transcribed letters omitted from publication because they lacked specific information on the Continental Congress that was already available in the official journals. A few of the documents copied from private collections are unavailable to the public in their original form. Cipher materials, editorial instructions, sundry lists and notes, and card files containing working research notes complete the series.
An Addition to the papers in 1998 consists of correspondence between Burnett, his family, and other parties, including J. Franklin Jameson, and is an extension of the Correspondence File. Also included in the Addition is a Letters Project File documenting the final disposition of Letters of Members of the Continental Congress project material, translations prepared by Burnett of ciphers used by the Lee family of Virginia, miscellaneous items, and writings by Burnett.