African American History Resources

Special Collections and Archives houses several manuscript, archival and print collections that contain records and information relevant to the study of African American history. They are especially rich in material concerning 19th century African Americans, both in Maine and nationwide.

Antislavery Materials at Bowdoin College : A Finding Aid, edited by Angela M. Leonard and published by the College in 1992, will provide researchers with an outline of much of the material available to them. This work is available through InterLibrary Loan.

This site describes those collections that contain extensive information; the collections that, although not directly concerning black America, do relate to its study; and small caches of material or individual items that could be of interest to researchers. (See the Civil War Resource Guide for related material.)

The list will be updated as new items are identified or acquired.

This guide is divided into:

African American Collections

Collections specifically assembled around African American subjects or individuals

  • African American Archives [M253]:
    This small (0.25 linear feet) collection, compiled in 1985, includes published articles, newspaper clippings, informational lists and other miscellaneous materials concerning slavery, abolitionism, and African American life, primarily in Maine and New England.

  • John Brown Russwurm Material:
    0.25 linear feet of material relating to Bowdoin's first African American graduate, founder of the first black newspaper, Freedom's Journal, and, later, governor of the Maryland Colony in Liberia. His commencement part, "The Condition and Prospects of Hayti [sic]" is part of the 1826 Class Records in the Archives.

Slavery and Anti-Slavery Material

Because of Bowdoin's connection to the Civil War and to the anti-slavery activities of some of its graduates and faculty, there is a small but important selection of works on slavery. Most, but not all, are from the abolitionist's perspective and most, but not all, deal with slavery in the United States.

  • Slavery Collection:
    This collection of books, pamphlets and broadsides relating to slavery, abolition and colonization is a valuable primary resource. It includes:
    • Monographs such as the three-volume Cabinet of Freedom.
    • Journals including The Non-Slaveholder.
    • Broadsides such as the "Slave's Dream."
    • Pamphlets by many notable abolitionist men and women, among them Angelina Grimke, Horace Mann, William Lloyd Garrison and Gerrit Smith.
    Consult the on-line catalog , and check with the staff for uncataloged items.

  • Stowe Collection:
    Harriet Beecher Stowe and her husband Calvin Ellis Stowe lived in Brunswick while writing Uncle Tom's Cabin; Calvin was then Bowdoin's Collins Professor of Natural and Revealed Religion. A collection of Stowe's works, including her anti-slavery novels, Uncle Tom's Cabin, or, Life Among the Lowly, of which we have an extensive selection, and several early editions of Dred : A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp, is supplemented by a small (0.25 linear feet) collection of manuscripts related to both Harriet and Calvin Stowe.

  • Bound Newspapers:
    Many early northern newspapers, most from the 18th century, carried slave sale advertisements or notices; several, including the Columbian Centinel of Boston and Portland's Eastern Argus are to be found in Special Collections. Also available is the Maine abolitionist newspaper the Advocate of Freedom, later the Liberty Standard or Free Soil Republican, (1838-1849). It was edited for several years by Bowdoin Professor William Smyth and published in Hallowell and Augusta.
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Related Collections and Sources

Several collections contain extensive materials of interest to those studying the lives and experiences of black Americans.

  • Oliver Otis Howard Papers:
    The personal papers of Oliver Otis Howard (60 linear feet) of Bowdoin's Class of 1850, Commissioner of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands (the Freedmen's Bureau) and founding president of Howard University, is an extremely rich source of information on 19th century African Americans. The correspondence files contain letters from:
    • Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, William Still and others prominent in the abolition movement
    • Booker T. Washington and those educating the freedmen and their children
    • Blanche Kelso Bruce and other black Reconstruction politicians seeking political influence and redress for African Americans
    • James Webster Smith, the first black West Point cadet
    • Many newly-freed men and women seeking information, aid or guidance in their new lives
    An index of correspondents is available for patron use.

  • United States Colored Troops had several Bowdoin graduates serving in it, among them:
    • James Deering Fessenden (Bowd. 1852) and Charles Henry Howard (Bowd 1859), both white officers, left correspondence in the Fessenden Papers and the Charles Henry Howard Papers respectively.
    • Henry Goddard Thomas (Bowd. 1858), another white officer, and John Van Surlay de Grasse (Med. Sch. 1849), one of the U.S. Army's eight African American surgeons, are represented in Bowdoin College and Medical School of Maine alumni biographical files in the College Archives.

Archives Resources

Bowdoin College and the affiliated Medical School of Maine matriculated six African Americans between 1826 and 1864. Information concerning these men can be found in the biographical files of Bowdoin and of the Medical School, and in the records of their Bowdoin classes. They were:

  • John Brown Russwurm (Bowd. 1826), co-editor of Freedom's Journal and later Governor of the Maryland Colony in Liberia, one of the first college educated African Americans.
  • John Van Surlay de Grasse (Med. Sch.1849), a New York City physician and assistant surgeon of the 35th U.S. Colored Troops.
  • Thomas Joiner White (Med. Sch. 1849), who settled and practiced in New York City.
  • Peter William Ray (Med. Sch. non-grad. 1849), 1850 graduate of Castleton Medical College.
  • William Miller Dutton (Med. Sch. non-grad. 1848), a resident of New York City about whom little is known.
  • Benjamin A. Boseman (Med. Sch. 1864) who practiced medicine in South Carolina and served in that state's Reconstruction legislature.

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Individual Items

Some manuscript collections contain one or two items that relate to African American history, many of which are identified in Antislavery Materials at Bowdoin College. These include:

  • Bills of sale for slaves (Miscellaneous Manuscripts and Shepley Papers)
  • A bounty hunter's account including, the recapture of a runaway slave (E.A. Pierce Collection)
  • Fair copy of a poem by Phillis Wheatley, the 18th century African American poet (Miscellaneous Manuscripts)
  • Letter regarding an African American couple working on an antebellum merchant ship (Tucker Papers)
  • Autograph letters of notables like Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois (Abbott Memorial Collection, Lyman Abbott Autograph Collection)
  • Correspondence of Matthew Henson, aide to Arctic explorer Robert E. Peary (Donald Baxter MacMillan Collection)
  • Approximately twenty pamphlets on the subject of colonization, most being annual reports of various colonization societies (American Imprints and Miscellaneous Pamphlets Collections).
  • A reference to fugitive slaves passing through Brunswick in George Smyth's Reminiscences of My Life.
  • An audio recording and transcription of a speech on civil rights delivered to the Bowdoin community by Martin Luther King, Jr. in First Parish Church on May 6, 1964. A recording of a question and answer session with Dr. King held afterward in Bowdoin's Moulton Union is also available.
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Maintained by George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections & Archives Staff
Bowdoin College Library, 3000 College Station, Brunswick, Maine 04011-8421
email: scaref@bowdoin.edu / telephone: (207) 725-3288
©Bowdoin College 2004