Collections : [Rare Book & Manuscript Library]

The correspondence consists of letters from Richard Harison to his wife, Frances, 1790-1794, from his trips to Albany and one to Philadelphia. There seem to be periodic meetings with various well-known legal figures including Egbert Benson, Josiah Ogden Hoffman, Abraham Ten Broeck, Morgan Lewis, and William North, who are mentioned in the letters. Two letters from Princeton and Philadelphia, Jan.-Feb. 1794, have interesting reference to Citizen Genet. Of his wife's letters to him, from New York, sixteen were while he was in Poughkeepsie at the Constitutional Convention in 1788, and three letters, 1783-1784, were sent to him in New Jersey while she was attending to family affairs in New York during his exile from the city. The manuscripts include his commonplace book, entitled "Extracts from various authors, upon several subjects" [after 1763]-1781, and ten genealogical and biographical records from his family papers.

Three volumes of correspondence, including some letterbook copies; many sermons, individually bound; prayers; and other manuscript materials. Correspondenbce is with many of his well known contemporaries and deals largely with matters pertaining to his church or to King's College. Shelved with the collection are two card file boxes containing an old handwritten calendar with abstracts, 1710-1914, a set of cross reference entries, and a calendar of material not at Columbia, 1715-1785. Additional letters have been added