RIAMCO

Rhode Island Archival and Manuscript Collections Online

For Participating Institutions

Marjorie W. Champlin papers (RLC.Ms.540)

Redwood Library and Athenaeum

50 Bellevue Avenue
Newport, RI 02840
Tel: (401) 847-0292
Fax: (401) 841-5680
email: redwood@redwoodlibrary.org

Scope & content

This collection consists primarily of letters and postcards Marjorie W. Champlin received in reply to the letters she sent to various United States and Rhode Island legislators and politicians, college professors, journalists, a member of England’s House of Commons, and Queen Elizabeth’s personal secretary at Buckingham Palace. Majority of the letters Champlin received were the sender’s response to her concerns, comments, and personal analysis of political campaigns, education reform, Social Security and Medicare, immigration, energy, and especially the Iran-Contra Affair of the early 1980s. Some correspondence received was in response to Champlin’s personal acknowledgment of an individual’s illness, birth, death, or visit to Newport, Rhode Island. Sometimes, the replies she received were mass produced and generalized, but the majority contain the sender’s actual signature with a personalized response to Champlin’s original communication.

Marjorie W. Champlin corresponded most often with Rhode Island Representative, Governor and Senator John H. Chafee (1922-1999) and Rhode Island Senator Claiborne Pell (1918-2009) as reflected in the letters in this collection. She also received correspondence from United States Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, George Bush, and Bill Clinton. The complete list of individuals she received correspondence from, in alphabetical order, is as follows:

  • Acheson, Dean (1893-1971)
  • Bentsen, Lloyd
  • Brown, Anne Kinsolving (1906-1985)
  • Brown, John Nicholas (1900-1979)
  • Bush, George H. W. (b. 1924)
  • Chafee, John H. (1922-1999)
  • Clinton, Bill (b. 1946)
  • Cousins, Norman (1915-1990)
  • Cox, Archibald (1912-2004)
  • Dukakis, Michael S. (b. 1933)
  • Eisenhower, Dwight D. (1890-1969)
  • Eisenhower, Julie Nixon (b. 1948)
  • Eisenhower, Mamie Doud (1896-1979)
  • Ford, Betty (1918-2011)
  • Gore, Albert (b. 1948)
  • Green, Theodore Francis (1867-1966)
  • Hamilton, Lee (b. 1931)
  • Harsch, Joseph C. (1905-1998)
  • Jackson, Glenda (b. 1936)
  • Lippitt, Frederick (1916-2005)
  • Lugar, Richard (b. 1932)
  • Machtley, Ronald K. (b. 1948)
  • McCormick, Anne O’Hare (1880-1954)
  • Meyers, Dee Dee (b. 1961)
  • Noel, Philip W. (b. 1931)
  • Ogburn, Charlton (1911-1998)
  • Pastore, John O. (1907-2000)
  • Pell, Claiborne (1918-2009)
  • Percy, Charles H. (1919-2011)
  • Richardson, Elliot L. (1920-1999)
  • Sandburg, Carl (1878-1967)
  • Schneider, Claudine (b. 1947)
  • Scott, Willard (b. 1934)
  • Sundlun, Bruce G. (1920-2011)
  • Turner, Stansfield (b. 1923)

Also included are two letters received by her brother, Richard L. Champlin, after her death in October 1993, and an undated essay she wrote titled, "What is Republicanism."