Scope and Content Note
The papers of Melville Weston Fuller (1833-1910) span the period 1794 to 1949, although the major part of the collection is concentrated in the years from 1849, when Fuller enrolled at Bowdoin College, to his death in 1910. The papers consists primarily of letters exchanged between Fuller and family members, as well as letters received from Bowdoin classmates and other friends and professional associates. Miscellany and Oversize series are also included in the collection.
The Family Correspondence series contains correspondence between members of the Fuller, Weston, and Coolbaugh families. Letters from Fuller's mother, Catherine Weston Fuller Wadleigh, and his grandmother, Paulina B. Weston, contain insights into Fuller's childhood in Maine and his college days at Bowdoin. Other details on Fuller as a student are provided in the correspondence of his brother, Henry Weld Fuller, and his cousin, Joseph Emerson Smith, in the Family Correspondence , and letters of Henry Stone and William Adolphus Wheeler in the General Correspondence series.
Fuller moved to Chicago in 1856 and established a legal practice devoted primarily to real property and commercial law. A strong advocate of the Democratic Party, he became a leading figure in Chicago political circles, serving in the Illinois House of Representatives from 1863 to 1865. Although the subject matter of the Family Correspondence series is concerned primarily with personal matters and family affairs, Fuller's letters to his grandfather, Nathan Weston, and to his wife, Mary Ellen Coolbaugh Fuller, contain information about his political ambitions and legal career in Chicago. Fuller's professional life is further revealed in letters exchanged with John W. Doane, Stephen Strong Gregory, John Morris, Erskine Mason Phelps, Henry M. Shepard, Lambert Tree, and Hugh Campbell Wallace in the General Correspondence series.
Fuller invested heavily in the expanding real estate market of mid-nineteenth century Chicago. Correspondence with Henry C. Morris, who represented Fuller's extensive private interests in real estate and other investments, is important in defining this aspect of Fuller's life.
Fuller’s correspondence with his wife constitutes the largest single group of letters in the collection and provides the fullest exposure to his views on the operations of the Supreme Court. These letters include observations about Fuller's associate justices on the Court, as well as comments on points of law. Fuller's career is also documented in correspondence with his colleagues on the Court, including William R. Day and William H. Moody, and with attorneys, government officials, and foreign dignitaries such as, Richard Everard Webster, Viscount Alverstone, Joseph Hodges Choate, A. H. Garland, John Hay, Henry M. Hoyt, Philander C. Knox, Daniel Scott Lamont, Robert Todd Lincoln, John Morris, Julian Pauncefote, Elihu Root, William M. Springer, Oscar S. Straus, and George W. Wickersham. The reporters of the Court during Fuller's tenure were John Chandler Bancroft Davis and Charles Henry Butler, and their correspondence is useful for understanding Fuller's administrative duties. The Miscellany series includes files for the clerk's and marshal's offices of the Court, which also contain administrative records concerning the management of the Court.
Letters from Presidents Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, and William H. Taft offer glimpses of social and political developments in the capital. Letters to Fuller from judges on the lower federal courts such as Hugh L. Bond, William H. Brawley, Walter Quintin Gresham, William L. Putnam, and Charles H. Simonton document the federal judiciary following the Court of Appeals Act of 1891.
Fuller was a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague, a representative of Great Britain on the tribunal that tried the matter of the Muscat dhows, and a member of the Venezuelan boundary arbitration tribunal. Material pertaining to these activities is contained in the Miscellany series. Related files in the General Correspondence series include those of David J. Brewer, Farrer Herschell, Baron Herschell, Heinrich Lammasch, and Fedor Fedorovich Martens.
Also included in the Miscellany are records of Fuller's involvement as a regent of the Smithsonian Institution and a trustee of the Peabody Education Fund. Letters from Richard Olney in the General Correspondence series further supplement the Smithsonian material.