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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.

Unknown [Partial Will and Testament for Ransom Lee]

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Gilder Lehrman Collection #: GLC09400.008 Author/Creator: Unknown Place Written: Tuscalusa County, Alabama Type: Autograph document Date: 20 March 1871 Pagination: 1 p. ; docket ; 60.5 x 15.4 cm. Order a Copy

A partial Last Will and Testament from the estate of Ransom Lee, It includes a metes and bounds description of real property. This document states that Susan Lee can live on the estate for the rest of her life, when she dies Thomas Lee and his wife Elizabeth Baker get the land. The document itself has been damaged. It has broken into four pieces at the fold lines, and the docket has been separated.

Blanche Kelso Bruce was born into slavery near Farmville, Prince Edward County, Va. on March 1 1841. He was tutored by his master's son, but left his master at the beginning of the civil war and taught school in Hannibal Mo. After the civil war Bruce became a planter in Mississippi, and a member of the Mississippi Levee Board, and Sheriff and Tax Collector for Bolivar County from 1872-1875. Bruce was then elected as a Republican to the United States Senate, where he served from March 4 1875 - March 3 1881. Bruce was the first African American to serve a full term in the U.S. Senate. In 1881 Bruce was appointed by President James Garfield as the Register of the Treasury. Bruce then went on to serve as the Recorder of Deeds for the District of Colombia from 1891-1893, returning to the office of Register of the Treasury from 1897 until his death on March 17, 1898.

Bruce, Blanche Kelso, 1841-1898

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