Scope and Content Note
The papers of Reuben Cleary (1835-1898) consist of two book manuscripts housed in six bound volumes. Cleary, a physician who served with Confederate armies from Virginia during the Civil War, immigrated to Brazil after the war to join the Confederate expatriate colony there. Between his arrival and approximately 1886, when at least one set of these papers was written, Cleary chronicled various aspects of life in Brazil, describing the role played by foreigners; government, religion and society; the state of transportation; the arrival of new technologies such as the telephone; and the state of medicine. Portions of Cleary’s Brazil Under the Monarchy: A Record of Facts and Observations, from Notes Taken During a Period of More Than Twenty Years were published in the Hispanic American Historical Review, volume II, number 4, November 1919.