Scope and Content Note
The papers of Joseph Hodges Choate (1832-1917) span the years 1745-1929, with the bulk of the material dating from 1852-1917. The papers are in English and are arranged into the following series: Family Correspondence , General Correspondence , Letterbooks , Subject File , Legal File , Addresses , Miscellany , Scrapbooks and Albums , and Oversize .
The papers relate primarily to Choate's family, 1745-1925; his attendance at Harvard University, 1848-1855; his law practice in New York, 1855-1917; his association with the American Museum of Natural History, 1869-1917, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1870-1917; his service as president of the New York Constitutional Convention, 1894; his work with New York charities, 1895-1917; his service as United States ambassador to Great Britain, 1899-1905; First Delegate to the International Peace Conference at the Hague, Netherlands, 1907; and his chairmanship of the New York committee for the 1917 reception of British and French commissions headed by Arthur James Balfour, Earl of Balfour, René Viviani, and Joseph Jacques Céesaire Joffre.
In the Family Correspondence series, Choates's wife, Caroline Sterling Choate, received and sent correspondence under the name of "Carrie." Choate also had a sister who received and sent correspondence under the name of "Carrie." Letters sent and received by Mabel Choate, daughter of the Choates, are filed with Caroline Sterling Choate's correspondence. Other correspondents included in the Family Correspondence are Choate's parents, George F. Choate and Margaret Manning Choate, and his brother, William Gardner Choate.
The papers pertaining to Choate's service as ambassador to Great Britain, especially the correspondence between him and John Hay and with President Theodore Roosevelt, indicate the diplomatic inter workings connected with the two Hay-Pauncefote treaties, the Open Door policy of the United States in the Far East, and the final settlement of the Alaskan boundary dispute. The papers include correspondence between Choate and President Roosevelt about the Algeciras Conference in Spain in 1906, concerning France's relationship to the government of Morocco. Other topics featured in the collection are the Union League of America, the Boxer Rebellion in China in 1900, the American Bar Association, and Choate's work with Harvard University alumni.
Correspondents include Charles Francis Adams; Arthur James Balfour, earl of Balfour; James M. Beck; James Bryce, viscount Bryce; John R. Carter; Grover Cleveland; George Nathaniel Curzon, marquis of Curzon; Charles William Eliot; William Maxwell Evarts; John Watson Foster; F. V. Greene; John Hay; Henry Charles Keith Petty-FitzMaurice, marquess of Lansdowne; Edwin T. Morgan; Henry K. Oliver; William Phillips; Robert S. Rantoul; Whitelaw Reid; Theodore Roosevelt; Elihu Root; William V. Rowe; Thomas Henry Sanderson, baron Sanderson; William H. Taft; Sir George Otta Trevelyan; Henry White; Woodrow Wilson; and Lothrop Withington.