RIAMCO

Rhode Island Archival and Manuscript Collections Online

For Participating Institutions

D'Wolf Family papers (D'Wolf Family Papers)

Bristol Historical & Preservation Society

PO Box 356
48 Court Street
Bristol, RI, 02809
Tel: 401-253-7223


Administrative Information

ABOUT THE COLLECTION  
Acquisition: Due to a number of reasons, including a fire in the 1960s, accession information at the Society is not complete. It is unknown where the major portion of the collection came from. John D'Wolf's correspondence with Sarah Sabens Wilson, Capt. Oliver Wilson, and the materials related to Capt. John Sabens, were apparently, put on permanent loan to the Society in the 1950s by Miss Alice Herreshoff one of the Society's founders, who was a direct descendent of John D'Wolf. Provenance of other papers is as follows. Ledger No. 2, October, 1797 - September, 1810 was the gift of the Haffenreffer Family. Brig Yankee was loaned by Agnes M. Herreshoff. Account Book of New Hope Cuba, 1859-1860 and Letter Book of the Ship Roger Williams kept by W.H. Mosher (Master, 6/I4/1825-June 1, 1830 were presented by Geo L. Howe. General Jackson Log Book was the of the Haffenreffer Family. Governor Fenner Log Book was the gift of the Haffenreffer Family.
Processing information: Both Alice Almy, one of the original founders of the Bristol Historical and Preservation society, and Helen Tessler, the society's librarian, until her death in 1997,worked on organizing the D'Wolf papers. Ms. Tessler made extensive notes about the contents of the files. When she died in 1997, processing of the papers was not completed. In the years following her death, no further organization was done and they became quite disordered. In 2007, re-processing the papers began. All were placed into archival folders and boxes. Miss Tessler's research notes were kept in the files. For most of the volumes, archival boxes were made to order. Because of the complexity of the collection, some series were entered into an Access database.
ABOUT THE FINDING AID  
Author: Finding aid prepared by Nancy Kougeas.
Encoding: This finding aid was produced using the Archivists' Toolkit 2013
Sponsor: Processing of this collection was made possible by grants from the R.I. State Archives, and by the Archive, Document, Display and Disseminate Fund of the Rhode Island Foundation.