Scope and Content Note
The papers of John Russell Young (1840-1899) span the years circa 1840-1959, with the bulk from 1858 to 1898. The collection includes the correspondence and diaries of Young and his wife, Mary Dow Davids Young; writings; biography with annotations; a scrapbook; photographs, and other papers relating chiefly to Young’s career as a journalist. There is Dow family correspondence from the 1840s through the 1880s, including correspondence, 1918-1920, to Lilian Lucille (Lee) Mills (Mrs. Stephen Crosby Mills) from Dorothy Mills (Young), the future wife of Young’s son, G. R. Young. The General Correspondence of John Russell Young relates primarily to political and journalist matters. A topic of particular significance in the series is a visit to the United States in 1896 of Chinese leader Hongzhang Li.
As a result of his tour around the world with ex-President Ulysses S. Grant, John Russell Young was able to obtain many originals of Grant’s incoming and some outgoing correspondence. This material has been removed from the Young Papers and incorporated into the Grant Papers also available in the Manuscript Division.
The Special Correspondence and Miscellany series includes three volumes of mounted manuscripts. The first volume contains twenty-three items from Grant to Young, November 15, 1870-August 25, 1883 and undated. The second volume contains correspondence, September 26, 1864-November 4, 1895, with Henry Ward Beecher, Charles Dickens, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Appleton Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Wendell Phillips, Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894), and others. The third volume relates to a planned meeting in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania in 1893 and letters of reply to Young from Edward Porter Alexander, James B. Gordon, O. O. Howard, William Dean Howells, Osmun Latrobe, Hoke Smith, Anson G. McCook, Daniel Edward Sickles, and others.
The Addition includes letters from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Dorothy Mills Young when he was at the United States Military Academy.
Other correspondents include Chester Alan Arthur; James Bryce, viscount Bryce; Salmon P. Chase; Samuel Langhorne Clemens; Roscoe Conkling; Jay Cooke; Augustin Daly; Charles A. Dana; John W. Forney; James A. Garfield; Henry George; Horace Greeley; Benjamin Harrison; John Hay; William McKinley; Edwin D. Morgan; Whitelaw Reid; Carl Schurz; Philip Henry Sheridan; William T. Sherman; Henry M. Stanley; Bayard Taylor; Henry Watterson; and Andrew Dickson White.