The papers of Robert Roberts Hitt (1834-1906) treat his life and activities as court reporter, secretary to various government agencies and commissions, secretary to the United States Legation in Paris, assistant secretary of state, congressman from Illinois, and chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. The collection spans the years 1830-1906 and includes diaries, correspondence, business files, shorthand notes of speeches, newspaper clippings, and family histories. The papers are organized into ten series: Biographical and Genealogical, General Correspondence, Special Correspondence, Business Correspondence, Official Correspondence, Subject File, Newspaper Clippings, Shorthand Notes, Devotional Books and Memorial Volume, and Miscellany.

Of special importance are the shorthand notes of political events in Illinois from 1856 to 1860, particularly the speeches of Abraham Lincoln, Stephen A. Douglas, Edwin McMasters Stanton, William Henry Seward, and those given at party conventions. Also featured are debates between Lyman Trumbull and William Allen and between Trumbull and Orlando B. Ficklin. Hitt, one of the few shorthand reporters in the Midwest, at that time, was employed by the Chicago Press and Tribune and the state of Illinois, and was a friend of Lincoln. His notes also cover his reporting of the Holt-Davis Commission in 1861 and of courts-martial for the War Department from 1863 to 1868. He also acted as secretary to the Board of Treaty Commissioners to the Indians in 1865. He kept a diary in shorthand from 1857 to 1864, transcribed by Frederic L. Davis in 1906, that describes life in Chicago, its law courts, and the appearances of lawyer Lincoln at that time. Hitt reported the speeches of Lincoln and Douglas in their famous debates of 1858, but these are not in the collection.

For his twenty-four years in Congress there are extensive Newspaper Clippings and Official Correspondence that reflect Hitt’s interest in the tariff, the annexation of Hawaii, and intervention in Cuba. He received an offer from President William McKinley to be minister to Spain. The General Correspondence, covers the years 1865 to his death, and there is some correspondence and clippings regarding the Lincoln-Douglas Debates. Also in the collection is business correspondence with his business agent, George Williams, and regarding his interest in the Louisville, New Albany & Chicago Railway, in banks, real estate, and other enterprises.

The personal material includes several records of his family history, material about his relatives, his interest in Rock River (Mt. Morris) Seminary and Asbury University (now DePauw University), and devotional books of Allie Reynolds, his wife’s aunt. Newspaper clippings during his life, and his obituaries, reveal the regard in which he was held by men of all political parties.