Just wondering.

[onejayhawk]

This is a line from a story, "Who knew a Continental Army Colonel in the family tree could be such fun?"

Background. This is a fictional family, from a fictional small New Jersey city. They have a house in the country, by a lake, in prime farm and orchard land. The first house was constructed when "Benjamin Franklin was a boy." You get an old, established family, and a place to accumulate papers and artifacts.

Enter grad students preparing for a period event. They stay another week digging in the attic. In all they gather a bushel basket (literally) full of notes, receipts, diaries, letters and other papers. The owner of the home agrees to allow the University to scan everything and to keep one pound of physical paper for a display.

Two questions:

1) How plausible is the scenario? By that I mean discovering a large amount of well preserved papers of an officer from the Revolutionary War and his family.

2) What would it be worth in historical and literal terms?

J

[Pogues]

Two questions:

1) How plausible is the scenario? By that I mean discovering a large amount of well preserved papers of an officer from the Revolutionary War and his family.

2) What would it be worth in historical and literal terms?

J

1) You would think it's not that plausible, but it seems to happen more often than you'd expect. I don't know how "well preserved" things can be kept in an attic, but they could still be legible and not completely brittle to the touch.

2) Historical terms, for us historian nerds, it could be a gold mine, or it could be worthless dribble. It all depends on what is there. How important was the family? Are they papers FROM the War, or just war era? If they are a soldier's papers, what was his rank, when and where did he serve, what did he command, who did he serve under, and who are other documents from?

In other words, unless I saw them or at least the scanned copies, I couldn't tell you the historical value with much certainty. There could be new information to fill in a few gaps, or an amazing new story to be found.

In terms of literal value, unless you have authentic signatures from some of the big names in American (or British) history, not worth all that much. Signatures are where it's at, for the most part.

[Gregg]

Autographs: PRESIDENT JOHN ADAMS - FOUR LANGUAGE SHIPS PAPERS SIGNED 08/11/1798 CO-SIGNED BY: GENERAL TIMOTHY PICKERING
PRESIDENT JOHN ADAMS - FOUR LANGUAGE SHIPS PAPERS SIGNED 08/11/1798 CO-SIGNED BY: GENERAL TIMOTHY PICKERING - DOCUMENT 277533

Ships papers signed in 1798 by Adams and Pickering, for the brig Jane sailing from Philadelphia to Antigua. The Jane was later captured by the corsair le Narbonnais; papers from captured ships are extremely rare. They're also historically significant, as they were signed a month after the beginning of the Quasi-War between France and the United States, an undeclared war that was fought exclusively at sea and was started over the capture of merchant ships like the Jane. Special
$99,500.00
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$79,600.00



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[Gregg]

This is a line from a story, "Who knew a Continental Army Colonel in the family tree could be such fun?"

Background. This is a fictional family, from a fictional small New Jersey city. They have a house in the country, by a lake, in prime farm and orchard land. The first house was constructed when "Benjamin Franklin was a boy." You get an old, established family, and a place to accumulate papers and artifacts.

Enter grad students preparing for a period event. They stay another week digging in the attic. In all they gather a bushel basket (literally) full of notes, receipts, diaries, letters and other papers. The owner of the home agrees to allow the University to scan everything and to keep one pound of physical paper for a display.

Two questions:

1) How plausible is the scenario? By that I mean discovering a large amount of well preserved papers of an officer from the Revolutionary War and his family.

2) What would it be worth in historical and literal terms?

J

If you figure about 100 sheets per pound probably worth $50k-$200k. Could be much more if as Pogues stated there were big name signatures in there.

[Pogues]

If you figure about 100 sheets per pound probably worth $50k-$200k. Could be much more if as Pogues stated there were big name signatures in there.

Again, it depends on what it is. I am dubious of these numbers, but it's possible depending on what is in the papers.

[onejayhawk]

The papers are going to Dartmouth University's library. The value would be in political favors. One of the family is a Teaching Fellow, which is ironic. She has a project involving the social science departments. Funding is a separate issue, but there are always requirements if you want to use the school's name.

A history major I know says there are three main hurdles:
1) Physical deterioration, particularly do to moisture. At least some of the articles would be 220-250 years old.
2) Rodents and idiots. Rats eat vellum. Drunk college students...never mind.
3) Casual discarding. People throw this sort of thing away all the time.

He also said that it was important that this is a large collection. There are many interlocking threads, which lead potentially to many points of corroboration. The Colonel, for example, may have a known tie to Washington or Franklin, but this embellishes what is known.

J