Office of the President Records : Jonathan Dickinson to Harold W. Dodds Subgroup

The content of this collection varies markedly over time. The eighteenth and
early nineteenth-century presidents' records are typically secondary sources
such as clippings or letters written by others, most of which long postdate the
lifetimes of the men to whom they refer. In a few instances, primary material in
the form of correspondence, financial records, and sermons exists. The early
presidents' records are usually divided into five broad categories: biographical
information, their presidency, family members, post- mortem material, and
portraits. It is only with the presidency of John Maclean, Jr. that original
materials such as correspondence begins to predominate, nor can any set of
records be said to be voluminous save his and those of Harold Dodds. In the
post-Maclean era, James McCosh's administration is the least well documented,
comprising just six boxes of material, and those of Francis Landey Patton,
Woodrow Wilson, and John Grier Hibben, though informative in many regards, are
by no means complete.Presidential portraits and other images have been placed at the end of the
collection under the appropriate series number and are referenced in the
following series descriptions. Every president is depicted, along with many of
their wives, though these images are limited in number and variety until the
advent of photography in the middle years of the nineteenth century. Photographs
of Presidents Robert Goheen (1957-1972), William Bowen (1972-1988), and Harold
Shapiro (1988-2001), whose records are presently closed and unprocessed, can be
found in the box 252.