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The Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library

Special Collection Holdings: Caribbean Islands

  • Backhouse, John, 1784–1845.
    Papers, 1740–1956. 4,480 items. Merchant and British Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
    Business and personal correspondence of the Backhouse family, principally of John Backhouse. Material for the 18th and early 19th centuries reflects the family's mercantile operations, including efforts to collect pre-Revolutionary debts in America. Other papers relate to Backhouse's career as Commissioner and Receiver General of the Excise Office and Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, his service as private secretary to George Canning, his service with the diplomatic corps, his art collection, and his mercantile associates in Amsterdam and Hamburg. Other subjects include the Board of Control under Canning, and the British consulates at Canton and Amoy. Family correspondence contains numerous references to the Foreign Office and to relations with Circassia, France, Greece, Russia, Turkey, and the United States. Letters and diaries of Backhouse's son, George, and his wife include references to the slave trade and describe their life in Havana while he was commissary judge there. Addition: 13 items. Thirteen Cabinet circulars dated from the British Foreign Office and marked for return to either Backhouse or Strangways. These abstracts of intelligence were based on confidential reports received from the British ambassadors in Paris, Berlin, Lisbon, Madrid, Constantinople, and Petersburg, and relate chiefly to French, Russian, and Spanish politics.
  • Ballard's Valley Plantation Papers
    1766 (1786–1848) 1873. 235 items and 9 vols. St. Mary's Parish, Jamaica.
    Financial papers and account books of Ballard's Valley Plantation, detailing the number and condition of slaves or apprentices and stock, purchases of goods, accounts payable, size of crops, and sales of sugar, rum, and cattle. Letters after 1837 also discuss crop conditions, the repeal of the Corn Laws, trouble with the freed Negroes in 1838, and the importation of Chinese labor in 1846.
  • Fuller, Stephen, 1716–1808.
    Papers, 1702–1796; (bulk 1786–1796) [manuscript]. 44 items. British iron manufacturer and colonial agent for Jamaica.
    Correspondence and other papers, chiefly 1786–1796. Includes discussions of West Indian, Anglo-American, and Anglo-Jamaican trade; slavery and the slave trade and the Wilberforce movement for its abolition (which Fuller opposed); English politics and colonial administration; inventions and inventors; the coming of England's war with France (1793); and Anglo-American diplomatic relations. Correspondents of note include William Blake, Joseph Maria Chacon, Henry Dundas, George Augustus Eliott, William Wyndham Grenville, Charles Jenkinson, Charles Lennox, William Pitt the Younger, and Howard Thomas.
  • Hathorn, Susan L.
    Papers, 1855. 1 v. Wife of Jode Hathorn, captain of the barque, J.J. HATHORN.
    She was the ship's bookkeeper, read the chronometer, and recorded the time, latitude, and longitude. Collection consists of a volume that has 105 pages of diary entries and 16 pages of financial accounts. The diary begins when the ship is in Cuba after starting its journey in Philadelphia. Hathorn records more information about her domestic life than about her husband, but she presents a clear and detailed description of what daily life was like for the wife of a commercial sailing captain. She also describes how the ship was left in Savannah, Ga. when she and her husband visited friends in Maine. She remained with her family when the ship was sold and gave birth to a daughter. The remainder of the volume contains a list of expenses.
  • Moore, Thomas.
    Commonplace Book, 1804–1846. 1 vol.
    Commonplace book kept by Thomas Moore, a Liverpool merchant, while in Havana. Included are maps of various West Indian islands, pictures of harbors, tables of measures and weights, tables of exchange, current prices of staples, insurance rates, an oath required of free men of the Russia Company in 1804, and the distances in nautical miles from London to the leading cities of the world.
  • Musgrave, Anthony, Sir, 1828–1888.
    Papers, 1739–1966 [manuscript]. 2,184 items.
    British colonial official, of East Grinstead, Sussex, England. Professional and personal papers of Sir Anthony Musgrave, of his wife, Jeanie Lucinda Field Musgrave; and of her father, David Dudley Field, lawyer and law reformer. Papers of David Dudley Field concern his early life and education, the Unitarian Church, his career in New York and the compilation of that state's civil, penal, and criminal codes, law reform, and his wife, Jane Lucinda Hopkins Field. Sir Anthony Musgrave's papers, correspondence, dispatches, and writings, pertain principally to the administration of various colonial governments, particularly Jamaica, 1877–1883, but also St. Vincent, 1861–1864; Newfoundland, 1864–1869, British Columbia, 1869–1872, Natal, 1872, South Australia, 1873, and Queensland, 1883–1888. Lady Musgrave's papers include personal correspondence, letters with Samuel Walker Griffith concerning Australian politics, and autobiographical and genealogical information.
  • Ortiz (Bobbye)
    Papers, 1930–1990. 16,500 items.
    Bobbye Ortiz was a well-known international feminist and Marxist activist who worked tirelessly throughout her life for social justice. She also founded WIRE (the Women's International Resource Exchange) and was a long-time editor for the journal Monthly Review. The collection spans the years from 1930 to Bobbye Ortiz's death in 1990, and includes her personal correspondence with friends and family, her extensive files on international politics and revolutionary movements in Europe, Latin America, Cuba, and China; subject files on women's liberation movements and women's issues; personal files belonging to her daughter Victoria Ortiz, a feminist and activist in her own right; and many ephemeral artifacts, including broadsides, grassroots newsletters, and T-shirts. Included are over 300 LP recordings of protest and folk songs from around the world, as well as recordings of a variety of interviews and political speeches.
  • Rosis, Tomás.
    Correspondence, 1851–1858 [manuscript]. 30 items.
    Letters to Rosis, probably a Cuban annexationist aiding Cubans who wished to come to the United States, from a sister in Havana, Cuba, discussing family affairs, conditions in Havana, and Tomás' work in the United States; and letters from relatives and contacts concerning assistance in getting to the United States.
  • Smyth, James Carmichael, Sir, 1779–1838.
    Papers, 1785–1952. 318 items.
    British Army officer and colonial Governor. Family correspondence, diaries (1819–1863) of Lady Carmichael-Smyth, and other papers, relating to Carmichael-Smyth's service in the Royal Engineers as colonial governor of the Bahamas (1829–1833) and of British Guiana (1833–1838). Includes references to his relationships with the Army, planters, slaves, and free blacks, especially in the Bahamas; information on the business career of Sir James Robert Carmichael, 2d Baronet, concerned with submarine telegraph cables connecting Britain and the Continent; several documents and accounts (1818–1827) on the estate of General Francis Dundas (d. 1824); and a few items about Gen. Robert Morse (1743–1818).
  • Spain. Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Consulate. Charleston, South Carolina.
    Papers, 1794–1898. 4,664 items and 46 vols. and
    Spain. Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Vice Consulate. Savannah, Georgia.
    Papers, (1835–1897) 1935. 975 items and 4 vols.
    Includes dispatches and various communications between the Madrid government and diplomatic and consular officials in the United States, Cuba, and Puerto Rico.
  • TePaske, John Jay
    Papers, 1500s–1988. 9000 Items.
    This collection consists of summaries of the fiscal records of the royal treasuries of key regions in colonial Spanish America. Represented in these records are present-day Mexico (New Spain), Peru, Upper Peru (Bolivia), Rio de la Plata (Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay), Chile, Ecuador, and Cuba. The scope of the records is broad and comprehensive, offering in most cases virtually complete series of fiscal data for the colonial era, from the sixteenth century through the early decades of the nineteenth century.