Scope and Content Note
The autograph collection of John Davis Batchelder (1872-1958) spans the years 1537-1944, with the bulk of material dating from 1800 to 1910. The collection contains autographs, letters, official documents, photographs, writings, sketches, and printed matter of prominent historical figures in the arts, sciences, and politics. The collection is in English and French with other languages, and is arranged in three series. Part I: Autographs comprises historical manuscripts and other material from Batchelder's earliest gifts. Items in this series are numbered and are arranged in numerically. Part II: Autographs contains an alphabetical arrangement of unnumbered autographs and other documents received in 1974. The Miscellany series consists of Batchelder's personal papers and includes correspondence, invitations, calling cards, sketches, notes, war ration books, and printed matter.
Batchelder acquired historical manuscripts, pictorial material, and printed matter in the United States and during his studies and extensive travel abroad, particularly in Europe. The broad range of the collection reflects his interest in documenting the history of Western culture. Persons represented in the Autograph series in Parts I and II include Honoré de Balzac; Catherine II, Empress of Russia; Albert Einstein, Henry VIII, King of England; Louis XIV, King of France; Peter I, Emperor of Russia; Auguste Rodin; and various presidents including Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and George Washington.
Despite the disparate nature of the collection, Batchelder collected extensively in several fields. Documents relating to American history include letters and writings from Henry Ward Beecher, Buffalo Bill, James Fenimore Cooper, Robert Fulton, and Cotton Mather. Among several items from seventeenth-century New England is a petition from more than a dozen women and men jailed for witchcraft in Ipswich, Massachusetts, in 1692. Many of the documents relate to events surrounding the French Revolution. Letters and writings from Jeanne de Saint-Remy de Valois La Motte, Marie Antoinette, Honoré-Gabrielle de Riquette Mirabeau, Henri Sanson, and François Marie Arouet de Voltaire, among others, are represented. The collection also reflects Batchelder's interest in nineteenth and early twentieth-century theater. Included are autographs, photographs, and letters from numerous actors, among them Sarah Bernhardt, Edwin Booth, Charlotte Cushman, John Drew, and Lillie Langtry.
Portions of Batchelder's vast collection are located in other divisions of the Library. Close to fifteen hundred books, broadsides, fine bindings, and some manuscripts are housed in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division. The Music Division includes autographs, letters, photographs, and ephemera relating chiefly to opera singers and nineteenth-century composers. Nearly eight hundred photographs, prints, postcards, and reproductions collected by Batchelder are located in the Prints and Photographs Division.