Bidwell family papers

Bidwell Family Papers

The Bidwell Family Papers, dating from the 1750s, encompass nearly two hundred years and six generations of Bidwells and their relatives. The two principal figures in the collection are Barnabas Bidwell (1763-1833), lawyer and politician in Massachusetts and later Kingston, Ontario, Upper Canada, and his son, Marshall Spring Bidwell (1799-1872), lawyer and politician in Kingston and later in New York City.

The papers have been arranged into three series: Barnabas Bidwell, Marshall Spring Bidwell, and the Correspondence and Personal Papers of Other Bidwell and Related Families.

The first series, Barnabas Bidwell, consists of two archive boxes and contains correspondence and writings by and about Barnabas Bidwell, as well as certificates, legal documents, and papers relating to his financial situation. The greatest part of Bidwell's correspondence is the exchange of letters between Bidwell and his wife, Mary Gray Bidwell. His letters from February 1802 to March 1805, are written from Boston where he served as a state senator. Of special interest are the letters written during the years he served in the U.S. House of Representatives (November 1805-February 1807), which contain descriptions of life in Washington, D.C. during Jefferson's second presidential term as well as descriptions of Washington society, members of Congress (including John Randolph), and the manners and customs of the Tunisian delegation. In addition there is an on-going discussion of Aaron Burr's intrigues in the West as details of his operations became known to members of the President's circle. Bidwell also commented on congressional business and impending legislation, i.e., Indian treaties and arrangements, relations with Great Britain and Spain, and the debate on prohibition of the slave trade in which he played an active role. In June 1807, Bidwell was appointed attorney general of Massachusetts, and his letters to his wife (until her death in February 1808) include discussions of his specific duties and activities.

This series also contains letters and official court papers which document in detail the circumstances surrounding the deficit (discovered in 1810) in the accounts of the Berkshire County Treasury, a post which Bidwell had held for nineteen years. The addition of papers and correspondence collected by Mrs. Charles A. Bidwell, a twentieth century kinswoman, mitigates considerably, however, the judgment made against Barnabas Bidwell in standard historical accounts of the incident. Bidwell's statement in his own defense may be found in his correspondence.

Series II, Marshall Spring Bidwell (1799-1872), consists of two boxes, containing the family and business correspondence of Marshall S. Bidwell. Much of the business correspondence concerns Canadian property owned by the Bidwells. In the closing years of his life, Marshall Spring Bidwell made numerous inquiries about the genealogy and history of the Bidwell family (these have been filed in Series III, under History and Genealogy). Among the notable correspondents in Series II is Samuel Wells Williams, an American missionary to China and a member of Commodore Perry's first and second expeditions to Japan (1853-1854). William's correspondence renders a first-hand account of these expeditions and records his impressions and conclusions. There is also correspondence pertaining to the Canadian Rebellion of December 1837 and to the circumstances which forced Marshall S. Bidwell to leave Canada. This correspondence describes Bidwell's efforts to obtain permission to re-enter the country and includes an exchange of letters with the Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, Sir Francis B. Head, who forced Bidwell to leave, and Charles Poulett Thomson, Head's successor. In addition, this series contains Marshall S. Bidwell's printed "Explanation to Friends," which explains his reasons for leaving Canada, the published explanation presented by his enemies, and newspaper clippings pertinent to the events of 1837 and 1838. The events of Bidwell's life and professional career as a lawyer have been described in several memorial tributes published upon his death in 1872.

One large segment of this series consists of Marshall S. Bidwell's degrees, certificates, licenses, deeds, mortgages, wills, and property records. Finally, there are legal papers of others, for the most part original grants of land and early deeds to property subsequently owned by the Bidwells. The original Canadian land grants from the Crown, mentioned above, date from the 1790's to the early 1800's.

Series III, Correspondence and Personal Papers of Other Bidwell and Related Families, is the largest series in the collection and is divided into three subsections:

Bidwell Family, General

Bidwell Family, Individual Members

Correspondence, Writings, and Photographs of Others

"Bidwell Family, General" contains genealogical and historical materials on the Bidwell and related families, materials on (Tyringham) Monterey, Massachusetts, the Bidwell ancestral home, and those materials which cannot be assigned to any particular family member. There are genealogical and historical materials on the Bidwells in England as well as in early Connecticut, and the descendants of Rev. Adonijah Bidwell (1716-1784) have been recorded down to the early years of the twentieth century. Family record books, correspondence and genealogical tables made up the bulk of this section. Some of this information, however, is in the form of published works; for example, "Bidwell and Allied Families," American Ancestry, Vol. IX (Joel Munsell's Sons: Albany, 1894). Historical data has been compiled on the following families related to the Bidwells by marriage: Dench, Devotion, Gibbs, Gray, Hart, Jackson, Orton, Partridge, Spring, Taylor, Warren, Welsh, and Willcox.

The materials devoted to Tyringham, now called Monterey, Massachusetts, includes the town records of births and deaths for the years 1750-1783 and 1807-1866, historical sketches describing the earliest settlers and the Congregational Church from 1750 to 1900, and several descriptions and photographs of the old cemetery, known as "the cemetery of the cross-eyed angels."

The "Bidwell Family, Individual Members," includes the correspondence, writings, notebooks, diaries, legal documents, clippings and photographs of some forty Bidwell family members. See: Appendix I for the individuals involved; See: Appendix II in order to place the individual in the larger family structure (Appendix II is not yet available in the online version of the finding aid, but is available in the repository). The Bidwell correspondence of the 1860's contains letters of two men who may be of historical interest. The first is Thomas Bidwell Orton (1844-1867), who served in Company E of the 28th regiment of the Connecticut Volunteers and later in the 150th regiment of the Ohio National Guard. Accounts of his service in the Civil War, 1862-1864, are to be found in letters to the Orton family and to Marshall Spring Bidwell, Jr. The second, Lawson Bennett Bidwell (1833-1922), was the civil engineer in charge of the construction of the eastern division of the Union Pacific Railroad in Kansas. His letters to his father, Lawson Dench Bidwell, and to Marshall Spring Bidwell, Jr., cover the years 1863 to 1864.

Three correspondents reflect the history of American missionaries abroad in the nineteenth century:

1. Mercy Partridge Whitney, missionary to Hawaii: to Clara E. Bidwell for 1828, to Marshall Spring Bidwell, Jr., for 1864; and to Barnabas Bidwell for 1828

2. W. Wells Williams, missionary to China; To Marshall Spring Bidwell for 1853-1854

3. Leonard W. Kip, Jr., missionary to China: To Marshall Spring Bidwell, Jr. during the years 1857 to 1877.

There are a few eighteenth and nineteenth century sermons, notably those of John Devotion and Adonijah Bidwell, and an interesting diary kept by John Welsh Bidwell, M.D., a surgeon on a government train, who traveled from New York to California in 1849. A much later diary, kept by Clara E. Bidwell, records her travels in Europe from 1878-1880.

An important part of Series III is the correspondence of Marshall Spring Bidwell, Jr. (1835-1877), the grandson of Barnabas Bidwell. His writings include a half-dozen articles published in Riverside Magazine (a publication for children), contributions to local newspapers, unpublished essays, and the Mountain Gem, a magazine-newsletter prepared for family and friends. Bidwell's articles are written with humor and cover a wide variety of subjects. "Leaflets for the Scrapbook," "Drug Store Notes," and "A Venerable Relic," are related to his occupation as a pharmacist. Among his many notebooks is one which contains the nineteenth century pharmacist's remedies, complete with ingredients, exact measurements, and an index. In his notebooks, Bidwell collected monograms, letter seals and other materials which, unlikely to be preserved by historians, retain the flavor of the period.

See also: The Brewer Family Papers, which are closely related to this collection and contain the papers of the Brewer branch of the Bidwell family, notably those of Rev. Josiah Brewer (1796-1872). David Josiah Brewer (1837-1910) is the grandson of Theodosia Bidwell (1766-1841); his sister, Henrietta W. Brewer, married Lawson Bennett Bidwell.