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Material gathered by Oswald Garrison Villard in the researches for his biography JOHN BROWN, 1800-1859: A BIOGRAPHY FIFTY YEARS AFTER. A large part of the materials is copies of correspondence both contemporary and of a later period, concerning John Brown and his associates, especially in the Kansas Territory and at the Harper's Ferry raid. Of the original letters in the collection, many are from descendants and family of John Brown and the men who accompanied him on his raid. There are clippings, pamphlets, proof sheets, and other printed matter. Photographs number 181 items.

Letters written to Mrs. Josephine Sophie White Griffing relating to her interests in the emancipation of African-Americans, temperance, and woman's suffrage. It is evident that the letters have been preserved selectively from Mrs. Griffing's papers, all of them being from well-known contemporaries. Correspondents include Frederick Douglass, Charles Sumner, Horace Greeley, Henry Ward Beecher, Anna Dickinson, Lucretia Mott, William H. Seward, and John Greenleaf Whittier. Many of the letters relate to her efforts to have prominent people give lectures in support of women's suffrage. Also, a scrapbook of clippings about Mrs. Griffing's life and activities and the autograph book of George T. Driggs, a relative, which contains the signatures of prominent political and military figures, particularly members of Congress, during the late 1860s.