Scope and Content Note
The papers of Adolphus Washington Greely (1844-1935) span the years 1753-1997, with the bulk of the material dating from 1880 to 1935. The papers are organized into eleven series: Personal File; Family Correspondence; Letters to Henrietta Hudson Cruger (Nesmith) Greely; General Correspondence; Letterbooks; Military Papers; Article, Book, and Speech File; Miscellany; Scrapbooks; Additions; and Oversize.
Many facets of Greely's career are represented by this collection, including his service in the Civil War as a Union soldier; his leadership of the ill-fated Lady Franklin Bay Expedition, which reached farther north than any previous exploring party; his direction of the construction of thousands of miles of telegraph wire and cables in many parts of the world; his career in the Signal Corps and as chief signal officer in the army; the reorganization of the United States Weather Bureau; his command of the Pacific Division, Northern Division, and Department of the Columbia; his direction of relief work after the San Francisco, California, earthquake and fire of 1906; his role in the settlement of the Ute Campaign; and his retirement years from 1908-1935.
Over half the collection consists of Family Correspondence, General Correspondence, and Letterbooks. Scientific correspondence after 1877 includes letters on polar matters exchanged with Robert E. Peary and Roald Amundsen; on electrical-radio matters with Guglielmo Marconi, S. P. Langley, Alexander Graham Bell, and Thomas A. Edison; on the birth of aviation with S. P. Langley and William ("Billy") Mitchell; and on the government's role in science and in the development of Alaska with members of Congress and the cabinet.
Prominent among Greely's other correspondents were Henry T. Allen, Henry Biederbick, Edward William Bok, David L. Brainard, William E. Chandler, Frank Moore Colby, Maurice Connell, Jesse Walter Fewkes, Frederick T. Frelinghuysen, Minnie L. Gardiner, William A. Glassford, Gilbert Hovey Grosvenor, William Babcock Hazen, Francis Long, George W. Melville, Charles Scribner, and William H. Taft. There is an interesting exchange of correspondence in May and June of 1890 between Greely and Theodore Roosevelt concerning the operation of the Civil Service Commission.
The Military Papers contain journals, reports, maps, scrapbooks, and other material related to the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition; the San Francisco, California, earthquake and fire; the laying of telegraph lines; and the Ute Campaign. Rounding out the series are Greely's orders for duty covering his army career from 1863. His Civil War diary from 1864 is in the Personal File.
The Article, Book, and Speech File contains bound volumes and loose materials of drafts and final copies of articles and speeches written by Greely while the book file includes a number of his published works. Included also is a draft of the unpublished "Around the World."
Of interest in the Miscellany series is the material collected on the Arctic including newspaper reports of other polar explorations and printed sketches; invitations and ephemera from events attended by Greely, especially the coronation of George V; biographical material; and a large number of newspaper articles mostly dealing with the San Francisco, California, earthquake and fire of 1906. The Scrapbooks are labeled by topics such as personal, miscellaneous clippings, coronation, places visited, foreigners met and known, and places in South America with overlapping dates. Scrapbooks of the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition are in the Military Papers series.
Rounding out the collection is a small amount of correspondence to Henrietta Hudson Cruger (Nesmith) Greely. Also of interest is a manuscript journal by the mate of the schooner United States on the Hayes Arctic Expedition of 1860-1861.
Oversize contains an indenture, certificates and citations, coronation booklets, dedication booklet, and a broadside.
The collection includes additions. The 2010 Addition contains biographical material, family and general correspondence, diaries kept by Greely during and after his military career, clippings, printed matter, writings about the Arctic and the Greely and Nesmith families, and miscellany. The diaries kept by Henrietta Hudson Cruger (Nesmith) Greely documenting social events, the family, and the career of her husband are interleaved with correspondence, telegrams, drawings, memorabilia, and clippings. The 2022 Addition contains family correspondence from Greely to his daughter Adola Greely Adams. The letters primarily include updates about the family and social events with some mention of Greely's activities and work.