Scope and Content Note
The papers of Frank Hastings Hamilton (1813-1886) span the years 1863-1882 and consist of correspondence, telegrams, memoranda, a memorial resolution, military documents, clippings, photographs, and scrapbooks focusing on Hamilton’s medical career in the Union Army during the Civil War and as a consultant to the physician attending to President James A. Garfield before his death from assassination in 1881.
Prominent in the collection is a scrapbook entitled “History of President Garfield’s Gun Shot Wound Compiled from July 2nd to September 3rd 1881,” collated for Hamilton and dedicated to him on September 5, 1881, by an associate, Faneuil D. Weisse. Included in the volume is the telegram sent from Secretary of State James Gillespie Blaine, at the request of Garfield's wife, Lucretia Rudolph Garfield, asking Hamilton to come to Washington to assist with the president’s treatment. Other items documenting Garfield’s condition and care include a graph of his temperature and pulse, July 2 to August 2, 1881, plus memoranda and annotated newspaper clippings on his assassination.
Prominent as well is a scrapbook of items from Hamilton’s Civil War service and his postwar work as a surgeon and professor of medicine. Included are photographs of the doctors of his medical staff in the Union Army, 1864-1864, as well as military documentation relating to Colonel Theodore B. Hamilton of the Sixty-second New York Infantry. Among the memorabilia are Confederate army passes and currency, and personal notes and illustrations described as having been taken from a Confederate soldier and a Confederate guerilla. A photograph separate from the album depicts medical directors of the Army of the Cumberland taken in front of General Philip Henry Sheridan’s tent at Murfreesboro, Tennessee, in 1863.
In a scrapbook reflecting Hamilton’s post-Civil War life is an 1877 letter from Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894).