Roderick Terry, Jr. autograph collection (RLC.Ms.024)

This collection contains correspondence, financial accounts, poems, legal documents, notes, lists, and other documents primarily from people prominent in colonial and early United States history including: George Washington, John Hancock, Aaron Burr, Henry Clay, Jonathan Edwards, Ethan Allen, Baron von Steuben, Lord North, Edmund Randolph, and Ezra Stiles. Materials from notable literary figures are also found within this collection including: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Victor Hugo, W. D. Howells, and four of the five Fireside Poets (Oliver Wendell Holmes, William Cullen Bryant, John Greenleaf Whittier and James Russell Lowell). Letters and documents from Rhode Island and Newport residents during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are also included.

Items of particular note include a letter to Major General Nathanael Greene from R.I. Governor William Greene about the British withdrawal of troops from R.I. in 1789, fleeing Loyalists, and the subsequent seizure of their property; a 1755 census of the number of people living in Rhode Island and they amount of army they kept in their homes; and a 1740 commission from the English royal government for setting the boundaries between Rhode Island and Massachusetts.