Scope and Content Note
The papers of Waldo Gifford Leland (1879-1966) span the years 1844-1966, with the bulk of the material concentrated in the period 1915-1966. The collection features the development of archival work in the United States and cooperation in the humanities and social sciences. The papers are organized into six series: Diaries and Notebooks; Family Papers; General Correspondence; Subject File; Speech, Article, and Book File; and Miscellany.
This collection documents in detail the period from 1947 to 1966 after Leland had retired as director of the American Council of Learned Societies and while he was associated with various organizations, government agencies, and other projects, often in an advisory capacity. For earlier years, there is considerable material concerning the formation and early years of the ACLS, 1919-1928, and the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation of the League of Nations, 1925-1939. The work of this committee was continued after World War II by Unesco, and Leland was also involved in the formation and subsequent work of this group.
The professional correspondence is also strongest for the two periods cited, during Leland's early professional career and his years of retirement. The largest groups of correspondence are those with his longtime friends, Abel Doysie, his primary assistant in Paris collecting information for the Paris Guide, and J. Franklin Jameson, whom Leland first knew as his teacher at Brown University. Jameson was instrumental in starting Leland on a career in the historical-archival field by inviting Leland to serve under him in the newly formed Department of Historical Research of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. Other major correspondents are Julian P. Boyd, Solon J. Buck, Halvdan Koht, Henri Pirenne, and Walter Muir Whitehill. There is also correspondence documenting Leland's close and longstanding associations with the American Philosophical Society, Brown University, and the Cosmos Club.
The earliest correspondence in the collection consists of letters to Leland's father, mother, and sister from people outside the family as well as correspondence between family members. Among the letters are two written to Leland's father by Charles Sumner, senator from Massachusetts, in 1851 and 1854. The earliest letter to Waldo Leland appears in 1883.
A significant part of the collection consists of material relating to the Guide to Materials for American History in the Libraries and Archives of Paris. He undertook this work for the Carnegie Institution of Washington, which published volumes 1 and 2 in 1932 and 1943 respectively. Although data and typescripts were completed for three more volumes, they were not published. Leland's notes made in France and those of his assistants on the project are contained in over five hundred cahiers (or notebooks) and numerous note cards. The drafts of volumes 3-5 prepared by David W. Parker and John J. Meng and typescripts of these and of volume 2 are included in the collection as are offset plates prepared for the volumes' proposed publication. There is correspondence concerning the guide dating from 1911, but most of it relates to Leland's efforts to publish the later volumes during the period 1954-1963.
Miscellaneous material in the Leland Papers includes copies of the Bulletins of the ACLS, 1920-1952, and a small number of items constituting the papers of Orie O. Brown, a friend of the Leland family, for the period 1891-1893, when she was a teacher at an Indian School in Pine Ridge, South Dakota.