Benjamin B. French Family

A Register of Its Papers in the Library of Congress

Prepared by Allan Teichroew
Revised and expanded by Michael Spangler

Manuscript Division, Library of Congress

Washington, D.C.

2000

Contact information: http://lcweb.loc.gov/rr/mss/address.html

Finding aid encoded by Library of Congress
Manuscript Division, 2003

Finding aid URL: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/eadmss.ms003036

Latest revision: 2008 January

Table of Contents

Collection Summary

Selected Search Terms

Names:

Subjects:

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Administrative Information

Provenance:

Processing History:

Transfers:

Copyright Status:

Microfilm:

Preferred Citation:

Biographical Notes

Benjamin B. French

Francis O. French

Amos Tuck

Scope and Content Note

Organization of the Papers

Description of Series

Container List

Collection Summary

Selected Search Terms

The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the Library's online catalog. They are grouped by name of person or organization, by subject or location, and by occupation and listed alphabetically therein.

Administrative Information

Part I of the papers of the Benjamin B. French Family, including the papers of Benjamin B. French, New Hampshire politician, clerk of the United States House of Representatives, and Commissioner of Public Buildings in Washington, D.C., were given to the Library of Congress by Daniel Chester French, Henry H. French, Prentiss French, Margaret French Cresson, and S. LeRoy French between 1922 and 1974. Additional items were obtained by gift and purchase from various sources from 1924 to 1975. Part II comprises additional papers of Benjamin B. French and other family members including Francis O. French, banker, and Amos Tuck, congressman, and were given to the Library by Peter S. and Katherine P. French between 1991 and 1994. Additional items in Part II were transferred from the National Archives and Records Administration in 1985.

Part I of the papers of the Benjamin B. French Family was arranged and described in 1980. Additional material received between 1985 and 1994 was processed as Part II in 2000. The papers of the Benjamin B. French Family have been described in Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress, vol. 28, Oct. 1971, pp. 287-289, and in Library of Congress Acquisitions: Manuscript Division, 1991, pp. 12-17.

Most prints and photographs have been transferred to the Library's Prints and Photographs Division where they are identified as part of these papers.

The donors have dedicated to the public any literary rights which they may possess in the family papers of Benjamin B. French.

A microfilm edition of Part I of these papers is available on thirteen reels for purchase from the Library's Photoduplication Service subject to the Copyright Law of the United States (Title 17, U.S.C.) An additional microfilm edition consisting of only the journals in Part I is also available on three reels for purchase subject to the same conditions. These microfilm editions may also be requested on interlibrary loan through the Library's Loan Division. No more than ten reels may be requested at a time for a loan period of one month. A copy of an early version of the finding aid for Part I of the Benjamin B. French Family Papers is available on reel one of the microfilm edition of Part I.

Researchers wishing to cite this collection should include the following information: Roman numeral designating the Part followed by colon and container number, Benjamin B. French Family Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Biographical Notes

Scope and Content Note

Part I

Part I of the papers of the Benjamin Brown French Family spans the years 1802-1924, with the bulk of the items concentrated in the period 1826-1870. Papers of Benjamin Brown French (1800-1870) comprising Part I are organized in the following series: Journals, Correspondence, and a Miscellany consisting of poems and other occasional writings, printed matter, and a scrapbook of clippings.

Benjamin B. French came to Washington, D.C., in 1833 from his native New Hampshire. He had already served briefly as clerk and representative in the New Hampshire state legislature when friends in the state secured him an appointment in the Clerk's Department of the United States House of Representatives. He kept this post twelve years, was elected clerk of the house in 1845, and in 1847 joined Samuel F. B. Morse in the operation of the Magnetic Telegraph Company. President Franklin Pierce appointed him Commissioner of Public Buildings in 1853, an office French resigned in 1855 only to be reappointed by President Lincoln in 1861. French made the acquaintance of twelve presidents, from Andrew Jackson to Ulysses S. Grant, but it was Lincoln to whom he was most devoted. One of his duties as Commissioner of Public Buildings was to attend semiweekly White House receptions and introduce Mrs. Lincoln to visitors. When Willie Lincoln died on February 20, 1862, French was called upon to take charge of the funeral arrangements. At Gettysburg he was on the speaker's stand when Lincoln dedicated the national cemetery in Pennsylvania on November 19, 1863, and in April 1865 he stood by the dying president's bedside.

French's private journals, which date from 1803 because of the enclosure of early family manuscripts, were begun by French in August 1828 and continue intermittently until August 1870. In addition to commentary on New Hampshire politics during the Jacksonian era, they contain extended discussion of freemasonry, the Magnetic Telegraph Company, and the day-to-day life of a man of affairs close to the central figures of his time. Cabinet officers, Congressmen, military leaders, and people of the arts and society appear frequently and sometimes on intimate terms throughout these pages. Included are comments on the presidency of Franklin Pierce, with whom French had been politically identified prior to his bolting to the Republican side in the late 1850s, and numerous passages illuminating French's regard for Lincoln. A hymn by French was sung at the Gettysburg dedication ceremony, and later he wrote a twelve-page retrospective of the event. His journals also portray other turning points of the Civil War, including a graphic description of the reception in the capital to news of the fall of Richmond. Lincoln's assassination is fully recorded, as are the acrimonious days following the war. The journals, edited by Donald B. Cole and John J. McDonough, were published in Witness to the Young Republic: A Yankee's Journal, 1828-1870 (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1989).

Almost all of the items in the Correspondence series in Part I consists of French's letters to and from his half brother, Henry Flagg French, a judge in Exeter, New Hampshire. Much like the journals, they contain accounts of the interior and exterior lives of nineteenth century Americans who observed much and recorded what they saw. Benjamin's letters treat religion, politics, art, and literature and are especially illuminating for their asides about events on the floor of the House of Representatives or in the halls of Congress. Observing fisticuffs between two congressmen which ended in cravats being pulled and vest buttons popped, he attended quietly to his minutetaking, kept his composure, and in a report to his brother noted that throughout the pandemonium he was "calm as a summer morning."

The Miscellany files include a scrapbook of French's writings and holograph and printed poems.

Part II

Part II of the Benjamin B. French Family Papers spans the years 1778-1940, with the bulk of the material dating from 1813 to 1893. Benjamin B. French, Francis Ormond French (1837-1893), and Amos Tuck (1810-1879) are the principal figures represented. The material is organized in the following series: Journals, Correspondence, Miscellany, and Oversize material.

Journals of Francis O. French, the older son of Benjamin B. French contain an account of a youth from a prominent family growing up in the nation's capital in the mid-nineteenth century. Beginning in 1850 when he was twelve years old, “Frank” French regularly kept his journals through 1856, a period during which he attended Mr. Wight's Rittenhouse Academy in Washington and Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, New Hampshire, and began his studies at Harvard College. Entries range from jottings on typical, day-to-day neighborhood and student activities to extended remarks on significant events, such as the deaths of prominent American political figures and the fire in the United States Capitol which destroyed the Library of Congress in 1851. Additionally the journals record the comings and goings of numerous family members who visited the French family. The first volume of these journals was edited by John J. McDonough and published as Growing Up on Capitol Hill: A Young Washingtonian's Journal, 1850-1852 /Francis O. French (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1997). Also included are journals kept by Francis French in 1864 and 1870-1871, in which he recorded a visit to his dying father in Washington, and fragments of journals by Benjamin French and Amos Tuck.

The Correspondence series comprises chiefly the personal letters of Benjamin B. French, Francis O. French, and Amos Tuck and is organized largely to reflect the original arrangement of the bound volumes from which the material was removed. Complementing his papers in Part I, the correspondence of Benjamin B. French with various family members includes news and observations similar to those in his journal. In frequent letters to his son Francis, he interlaces news from home and fatherly advice with observations and commentary on political figures, government officials, and significant events. The letters reveal French's growing anxiety as the nation drifted toward dissolution, tempered by his determined faith that the Union would prevail. Even though an admirer of Abraham Lincoln, French was still critical of Lincoln's “shilly shally” during the months leading up to the war. French's letters to his son Francis in April 1865 provide an important account of events surrounding Lincoln's death, including French's assertion that John Wilkes Booth had created an unusual disturbance at Lincoln's second inauguration. French's correspondence also includes a miscellaneous group of incoming letters relating primarily to his Masonic activities.

The personal letters of Francis O. French also constitute a significant portion of the Correspondence series. Francis French trained as a lawyer at Harvard and after the Civil War established a successful career in international finance. In 1870 he joined Jay Cooke & Co., survived its collapse in 1873, and joined a group with controlling interest in the First National Bank of New York. In 1880 he sold his interest in First National and, in failing health, traveled extensively in his final years. His correspondence offers less striking commentary than his father, but provides insight into the life of a prosperous American family of the late nineteenth century and includes letters received from prominent men in finance and government as well as family members. Correspondents include Harris C. Fahnestock (banker), Daniel Chester French (a cousin), and secretaries of the treasury Lot M. Morrill, Hugh McCulloch, William A. Richardson (a cousin), and John Sherman.

The Correspondence also contains family correspondence of Amos Tuck, whose daughter Ellen married Francis French in 1861. An inhabitant of New Hampshire, Tuck studied law, served as a representative in Congress from 1847 to 1853, and was involved in the founding of the Republican party in 1853-1854. His letters to family members include commentary on politics, his travels in the Midwest in the 1851, and the devastation of the South after the Civil War. There are also a few personal letters of William Merchant Richardson, father of Benjamin B. French's first wife and a chief justice of the New Hampshire Superior Court. The Correspondence series contains a small number of photocopies of original letters, invitations, and related documents from prominent figures received by Benjamin B. and Francis O. French but not included among these papers.

Among the speeches and writings in the Miscellany series is Benjamin B. French's memoir of his early years as a clerk in the House of Representatives and a Fourth of July speech prepared by William Merchant Richardson in 1808 discussing Thomas Jefferson and the Embargo Act. Other items among the Miscellany include biographical material, certificates, a commonplace book, memorials, memorabilia, and scrapbooks.

Organization of the Papers

The collection is arranged in two parts composed of seven series:

• Part I
  • Journals, 1803-1870
  • Correspondence, 1826-1924
  • Miscellany, 1802-1977, n.d.
• Part II
  • Journals, 1837-1879
  • Correspondence, 1778-1940, n.d.
  • Miscellany, 1787-1938, n.d.
  • Oversize, 1819-1893

Description of Series

Container List