Joseph Dow family papers

Collection

Identifier: Coll. 4227

Staff Only

Scope and Content note

The collection consists of the correspondence, financial records, account and day books, and legal papers of Joseph Dow and other members of the extended Dow family. Included are deeds and correspondence between Dow family members and the related Marstons, as well as a selection of Civil War letters from James Bradbury to his family. A significant portion of the collection is comprised of the legal writs and complaints presented to Joseph Dow during his tenure as Justice of the Peace in Franklin County. The correspondence files of various family members represent personal, professional, and business interests, and represent activity in various towns, including Phillips, Me., Cambridge, Mass., and Yuba, Calif. The material is organized by creator and by type.

Dates

Creation: 1812 - 1894

Creator

Access

Unrestricted

Copyright

Access to collections at Maine Historical Society is not an authorization to publish. Rights and reproduction requests may be submitted in writing to the MHS Image Services Coordinator or Research & Administrative Librarian, subject to format.

Biographical note

Joseph Dow (1787-1860) lived in Phillips, Maine, with his wife Abigail and their four children: Lovina (Beal), Rosannah (Marston), Charles, and Henry. Joseph Dow served as Justice of the Peace in Franklin County for multiple decades, the papers of which comprise the bulk of this collection. Additional material spans generations of the Dow family, and includes some belonging to Joseph Dow’s son-in-law, Daniel Marston, and that of Marston’s relative Perez F. Bonney of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Henry W. Dow, son of Joseph and Abigail, migrated west to Yuba, California, and some of his correspondence, along with that of his wife Barbara Dow and their youngest son Charles R. Dow, is present in the collection.

Also included in the collection are the Civil War letters of James True Bradbury, written to his family in Machias, Maine, between 1861 and 1863. In 1863, Bradbury was killed in Virginia. Some envelopes with the collection, addressed to his father Wyer Bradbury, were delivered care of A.J. Dow, and were filed with the Dow material when this collection was donated.

Extent

1 Linear Feet (2 boxes)

Language of Materials

English

Additional Description

Provenance

Gift of E. Christopher Livesay, June 20 and June 27, 2022 (acc. no. 2023.021).

Processing note

E. Christopher Livesay gifted these papers to MHS as part of a larger donation of material compiled over decades as a collector of Maine-related manuscripts and books. All of the material from the donation shares accession number 2023.021.

This collection arrived grouped in general folders of correspondence and labeled stacks of books. The legal writs and complaints were separated and housed in custom-fit wooden boxes, folded and grouped chronologically. The writs and complaints have been left folded due to their fragility and the fact that many contain numerous loose slips of paper which, given the volume, could easily become disaggregated.

The received arrangement was largely maintained, with correspondence, books, and writs filed in discrete folders and organized by creator. Items were rehoused in legal-sized archival folders and the material was processed as an individual collection.