Our Collection

At the Institute’s core is the Gilder Lehrman Collection, one of the great archives in American history. More than 85,000 items cover five hundred years of American history, from Columbus’s 1493 letter describing the New World through the end of the twentieth century.

Bishop of Landoff (ca. 1763-1791) to Catherine Macaulay

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Gilder Lehrman Collection #: GLC01794.41 Author/Creator: Bishop of Landoff (ca. 1763-1791) Place Written: s.l. Type: Autograph letter signed Date: 9 November, 1783 Pagination: 1p : docket; 22.5 x 19 cm. Order a Copy

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After the death of her husband George Macaulay in 1766, Catharine Macaulay married an Anglican minister William Graham. Letters from her female descendents are in GLC 1795. Notable in that collection are letters of her daughter, Catharine Sophia Macaulay [Gregorie], to Macaulay while the latter toured America and France. This collection of Lady Catharine's correspondence was broken-up for public sale in 1993. The Gilder Lehrman Collection has also acquired other letters written to her, including GLC 1784.01-1800.04. There are approximately 190 items between these accession numbers. GLC 1784-1793 and 1796-1800 are individual documents written by important American figures including John Adams, Ezra Stiles, John Dickinson, William Cooper, Richard Henry Lee, Mercy Otis Warren and the pseudonymous "Sophronia." Most of the documents relate to the events leading the Revolution. A few, notably the letters from Mercy Otis Warren and "Sophronia" concern the new Constitution and the French Revolution.

St. George [illegible] Novr. 9: 1783
Madam
Last night I found on
On my arrival in town, my table, a treatise on the Immutability of Moral Truth: presuming that I am indebted for this compliment to yourself I take the first opportunity of expressing to you my sense of the favour. Accept, Madam, my best thanks. I feel myself highly gratified by this mark of your attention, I look upon it as the attention of the best historian of our Country & of the firmest friend of the natural rights of human kind & I beg that you would believe me when I say that I value it very highly. I am, Madam, with the greatest
respect your much obliged
Servt
R. Landaff

Macaulay, Catharine, 1731-1791

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