WELCOME TO

THE YELLOW HOUSE PAPERS

THE LAURA E. RICHARDS

COLLECTION, GARDINER ME

INTRODUCTION

Actually, the word introduction is redundant because this entire volume is an introduction to the Yellow House Papers themselves, the literary remains of Laura E. Richards (1850-1943) and of her family, not the least of whom was her mother Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910) of Battle Hymn Fame. These papers accumulated over a period of nine generations, from late colonial times until the early 1980s.

This reference work is intended to be "user friendly" to drop phrase from a generation not known to Laura E. Richards. It divides into two major parts: first, the inventory itself, the contents of eigthy-five boxes, winnowed to forty-five boxes, placed on indefinite deposit at Colby College, and divided into thirty-six record groups linked to various generations and branches of the family connection. Secondly, the major part of this reference work is an explanation of what is represented in the Yellow House Papers with highly specific suggestions to ease the lot of researchers who first encounter the papers at Colby College.

The series of appendices may be read independently of one another. Many chapter headings and divisional heads will allow the research to breeze his or her way through to some relevant explanation. The compiler has tried to devise as many entry or access points as possible, working from the general to the specific, from the specific to the general, the topical, the bibliographical, the genealogical, and the geographical -- even reformatting these presentations so that one can relate the genealogical to the bibliographical, the geographical to the topical, or to any other manner of cross references.

Two papers, one on Sarah Mitchell Cutler, and the other on the poetry of Laura Elizabeth Wiggins have been included amongst the appendices to impart some flavour of what untapped potential appears in the collection for the pursuit of women's studies and other twentieth-century disciplines.

From time to time, the compiler anticipates depositing extended genealogies, land title studies, typescripts of many items within the collection, and related materials at both the Gardiner Public Library and at Miller Library at Colby College. The basic guide to the family genealogy of the Yellow House residents is the compiler's Gardiner's Yellow House. The researcher will do well to read also the autobiographies of Henry Richards, Ninety Years On (1940) and of Laura E. Richards, Stepping Westward (1931) as well as Louise Hall Tharp's Three Saints and a Sinner (1956) before embarking upon an examination of the Yellow House Papers themselves.