Hapgood family papers

The Hapgood Family Papers contain correspondence; manuscripts of books, plays, poems, articles, book reviews, essays, and short stories; business papers, diaries, maps, photographs, subject files, writings of others, and miscellaneous papers which document the lives and careers of various members of the Hapgood family and to a lesser extent the Boyce family, most notably Hutchins Hapgood and Neith Boyce Hapgood. The material spans the years 1829 to 1977, with the bulk falling between 1900 and 1940.

The papers are housed in forty-eight boxes and are divided into four series. Writings is by far the largest series in the collection. Family Correspondence comprises the second largest series. Personal Correspondence and Family Papers make up the rest of the collection. Oversize materials are placed at the end.

Series I, Personal Correspondence (Boxes 1-8), covers the period 1849-1950 and contains personal correspondence between members of the Hapgood and Boyce families with non-related individuals and business correspondence. The bulk of this material deals with Hutchins Hapgood and/or Neith Boyce Hapgood, although personal and business correspondence of other family members is also present. On the Hapgood side, these include Hutchins's parents Charles Hutchins Hapgood (1836-1917) and Fanny Louise Collins Powers Hapgood, his maiden aunt Emma Frances Hapgood who lived with his parents, his brothers Norman Hapgood and William Powers Hapgood, as well as the children of Hutchins and Neith, Harry Boyce Hapgood, Charles Hutchins Hapgood (1904-82), Miriam Hapgood DeWitt, and Beatrix Hapgood Faust. On the Boyce side, correspondents include Neith's parents, Henry Harrison Boyce and Mary Ella Smith Boyce, her sisters Margaret Boyce Bonnell and Faith Boyce, and her neice Elizabeth Boyce Reklaitis.

Included among the artistic and literary figures with whom the Hapgoods correspondended are Ray Stannard Baker, Arthur F. Bentley, Bernard and Mary Berenson, Bayard Boyesen, George Cram Cook, John Dos Passos, Theodore Dreiser, Max Eastman, Susan Glaspell, Hippolyte Havel, Robert Herrick, Mabel Dodge Luhan, Lewis Mumford, Georgia O'Keeffe, John Reed, Gertrude and Leo Stein, Maurice Sterne, Alfred Stieglitz, Carl Van Vechten, and Ella Winter. Hutchins's social and political activism is reflected in the correspondence of Abraham Cahan, John Collier, Edward J. Flynn, Emma Goldman, Anton Johannsen, Charles and Marguerite Kaeselau, Matthew and Katherine Schmidt, and Lincoln Steffens.

During the final years of their lives, Hutchins and Neith worked on a project which aimed to relate the story of the Hapgood family to the history of the United States. This work, entitled The Story of an American Family, was eventually published in 1953 (after the death of both Hutchins and Neith). It covered the years 1648 to 1917. In compiling the research materials for this book, Hutchins and Neith acquired copies of significant correspondence from prominent Hapgood family members, most notably that between Norman Hapgood, Hutchins's older brother, and Supreme Court justices Louis D. Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter, Learned Hand, and presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt. The folder of Theodore Roosevelt's correspondence reflects the relationship between the president and Colonel Henry H. Boyce, Neith's father.

The business correspondence primarily contains letters Neith exchanged with various magazines and other publishing houses about negotiations on submitted writings. The Letters of Bernard and Mary Berenson (Box 1, folders 17-19) provide information on the American literary circle in Florence over a fifty-year period. The Mabel Dodge Luhan correspondence (Box 5, folders 147-56), describes the activities of the Taos artistic and literary set. The correspondence of Fred J. Bowen (Box 1, folders 22-26) is mainly with Charles Hutchins Hapgood (1836-1917) and concerns the management of a 6000-acre cattle ranch he owned in Kansas. Bowen and T. H. O'Brien (Box 6, folder 177) discuss the death of Boyce Hapgood. A free-spirited soul who desired to experience the life of a cowboy on the western plains, Boyce was taken ill in Colorado and died suddenly at the age of eighteen in the influenza epidemic of 1918.

Scattered throughout the series is correspondence of close personal friends whom Hutchins and Neith knew from Key West, Florida, Provincetown, Massachusetts, and Richmond, New Hampshire. These include Edward and Peggy Bruce, Oliver and Ada Chafee, John and Elizabeth Cowles, Colin and Eva Cruikshank, John and Jane Dewey, Elsie Everts, Leslie Hopkinson, Russell and Katrina Johnson, William and Sally Johnstone, Bill and Lucy L'Engle, Harry Lorber (their personal physician), Eddie MacGowan, Frances Stanwood, Lucile Swan, Ridgley and Olivia Torrence, and Sam and Adele Wolman.

Series II, Family Correspondence (Boxes 9-21), covers the period 1849-1950 and contains correspondence among five generations of Hapgoods and, to a lesser extent, Boyce family members. This series provides information on a well-educated and culturally influential American family active in the literary life of the nation during a formative period of American history. It also provides a look at an educated American family typical in respect to its births and deaths, marriages and divorces, joys and sorrows. This material runs the gamut from letters to parents from their children away at summer camp to letters between husband and wife discussing philosophical and metaphysical issues.

The letters from the nineteenth century provide poignant impressions of everyday life in small New England villages as well as large cities such as Chicago, New York, and San Francisco. For instance, while on a visit to Washington, D.C., Charles Hutchins Hapgood (1836-1917) writes in a letter of February 1, 1865, to his mother about attending a reception given by Mrs. Lincoln.

The bulk of the correspondence was generated by Hutchins and Neith. As they often lived apart, they wrote one another frequently. Boxes 11-13 house Hutchins's letters to Neith; Boxes 18-20, Neith's to Hutchins. The collection also contains considerable correspondence from Hutchins and Neith to their son Charles Hutchins (Boxes 14-18), and to their daughter Miriam (Box 14, folders 402-14), but relatively little to daughter Beatrix (Box 14, folder 415) and son Boyce (Box 18, folders 473-75). The correspondence between Hutchins and his parents and his Aunt Emma provides glimpses into his adolescence, college years and world travels, and his later career. In letters to his aunt and mother, for instance, Hutchins mentions visiting the Samuel Clemenses. Genealogical charts of both Hapgood and Boyce families are provided on pages 14-18.

Series III, Writings (Boxes 22-44), represents the creative output of Hutchins and Neith Boyce Hapgood. Hutchins Hapgood's writings are divided into three sections, Books, Plays, and Shorter Works. The Books section consists of research notes, manuscript drafts, galley proofs, page proofs, advertisements, publicity, copyright agreements, printed versions, and book reviews of Hutchins's works. The most notable are The Story of a Lover, which recounts the married life of Hutchins and Neith in some detail, and Hutchins's autobiography, A Victorian in the Modern World. The Plays section contains manuscript drafts of two plays, including Enemies, one of the first works performed by the Provincetown Players. Shorter Works is comprised of Articles, Book Reviews (written by Hutchins on the works of others), Essays, and Letters to the Editor. Articles contains clippings of Hutchins's journalistic writings. Excepting those in Box 27, folders 758 and 792, which were published in the Chicago Evening Post, all of these articles appeared in various New York City newspapers and are typical examples of the muck-raking style.

The writings of Neith Boyce Hapgood are arranged under the headings of Books, Plays, Poems, and Shorter Works. The Books section consists of research notes, manuscript drafts, advertisements, contracts, and book reviews of Neith's works. Of note in this section are manuscripts for Neith's "Autobiography," written in the third person; "The Doomed City," which details life in Key West, Florida, during the 1930s; and "The Town in the Forest," a history of Richmond, New Hampshire. The Plays section is comprised of some two dozen dramatic works. Poems contains more than fifty poetic renderings. Shorter Works is comprised of book reviews, more than two dozen essays, letters to the editor, more than one hundred short stories, and miscellaneous research notes.

Series IV, Family Papers (Boxes 45-47), represents the accumulated personal papers and effects of five generations of Hapgood and Boyce family members. This series contains business papers, diaries, maps, photographs, writings of others, subject files, and miscellaneous papers. Business Papers provides information on the Hapgood cattle ranch in Kansas and the Columbia Conserve Company in Indianapolis. The diaries of Neith Boyce Hapgood present accounts of the Hapgood's sojourns in Italy in 1903 and 1914. During much of this time they were houseguests of the Berenson's at I Tatti. There are around fifty photographs of family members, friends, and family pets. The subject files contain a rich cross-section of family memorabilia, including poems, drawings, calling cards, wedding invitations, wills, and obituaries.

Oversize (Box 48) contains materials from all four series. It includes personal and family correspondence, research notes, draft fragments, book reviews, maps, photographs, subject files, and miscellaneous papers. Of particular interest are a photograph of Hutchins and Neith in a scene from the play Enemies, co-written by them, in Provincetown in 1916, and also two 1914 neswpaper articles on Mabel Dodge Luhan's famous salon at 23 Fifth Avenue in New York City, both illustrated with drawings depicting Mabel surrounded by admiring literati.