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Collection Data
- Description
- Theodore W. Winthrop (1828-1861) was an American author who wrote travel books and books about art and poetry. He served in the N.Y. militia and was killed in Virginia in the U.S. Civil War. Collection consists of Winthrop's correspondence, writings, diaries, notebooks, and lectures. Papers include compositions written while at Yale College, 1844-1849; letters to his family, 1847-1857; diaries and notebooks, 1848-1860; and his lectures, 1856, on various subjects. Also, typewritten transcripts of most of the materials.
- Names
- Winthrop, Theodore, 1828-1861 (Creator)
- Winthrop, Theodore, 1828-1861 (Author)
- Dates / Origin
- Date Created: 1844 - 1860
- Library locations
- Manuscripts and Archives Division
- Shelf locator: MssCol 3363
- Topics
- Winthrop, Theodore, 1828-1861
- Yale University -- Students
- American literature
- Genres
- Correspondence
- Diaries
- Notebooks
- writings (documents)
- Notes
- Biographical/historical: Theodore Winthrop (1828-1861) born in New Haven, CT, was the third son of Francis Bayard Winthrop by his second wife, Elizabeth Woolsey. His childhood consisted of reading from his father's large personal book collection, contemplation, wandering in the countryside and listening to stories. Having received his education at a dame school under Silas French, he entered Yale in 1843. He was dismissed from Yale in 1844 for breaking windows. He reapplied himself at Yale and in 1849 graduated.
He planned to study law at Harvard but was unable to because of ill health. Instead he began the first of his many travels. He spent the next year and a half in Europe traveling to many countries, detailing his experiences in lengthy correspondence and diary writing. In 1851 he worked in the New York office of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company. He visited Europe again, and in 1853 sold tickets on the Panama Railroad. Taking a ship from Panama, he then explored California, Oregon, and Victoria B. C.
On return from his travels in the northwest, he decided to go back to Panama, this time with Lieutenant Isaac G. Strain on an expedition to the Darien Isthmus to survey the site as a possible place to dig a canal. Mr. Winthrop and some others got separated from the Lieutenant's party. Back in New York, he studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1855. He traveled the Adirondack and Maine woods with the painter Frederick E. Church, started a law partnership in St. Louis, and returned to New York in 1857 to pursue his literary career.
His first published work was a description of a painting by his friend Church. The work was entitled A Companion to the Heart of Andes (1859). Living in Staten Island, he spent most of his time writing until 1861 when he enlisted in the 7th New York Regiment, which guarded Washington for a month. He then went to Fortress Monroe and was shot dead in an engagement at Great Bethel on June 10, 1861.
He had sent James Russell Lowell wartime anecdotes, which appeared in the Atlantic Monthly (June, July 1861). His family offered his unpublished manuscripts to Ticknor and Fields, who published Cecil Dreeme (1861); John Brent (1862); and Edwin Brothertoft (1862). Two works of non-fiction, The Canoe and the Saddle (1863) and Life in the open air (1863), were also published by Ticknor and Fields. Forty-nine years after he wrote it, Mr. Waddy's Return (1904), his first novel, was published by Henry Holt and Company. Three other works lay unpublished: Brothertoft Manor; Ice, A Winter Sketch; and Katahdin and the Penobscot.
- Content: The Theodore Winthrop Papers (1844-1860) consist of family correspondence, primarily letters to his mother in New Haven, CT. Other persons he wrote to were his sister Laura, her husband Templeton, and his other sister Sarah. This correspondence describes his adventures as he traveled through Europe, Panama, California, Oregon, and British Columbia. The collection also includes his academic papers while he was a student at Yale (1844-1849), his college thesis, and two lectures. Winthrop's diaries, 1848-1856, are primarily concerned with his travels. The last half of one diary, Mar. 1850-Sep. 1850, is filled with original poetry dated 1856. Eight holograph manuscripts of his published and unpublished works, including a fragment of another work, are included. Transcripts of most of the correspondence, school papers, and diaries were made by Willard E. Martin, Jr. and augment the collection, as does a bound collection of photostats of Winthrop's obituaries and other miscellany.
- Physical Description
- Extent: 2.6 linear feet (8 boxes, 1 volume)
- Type of Resource
- Text
- Identifiers
- NYPL catalog ID (B-number): b11996399
- MSS Unit ID: 3363
- RLIN/OCLC: NYPW94-A426
- Universal Unique Identifier (UUID): 40fa8630-ac59-0139-1600-0242ac110004
