University of Virginia Library

TRANSCRIPTS IN THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

Other attempts have been made to secure resources for research in America.
Not only is there the aggregation of excerpts from the English documents in
Richmond, as described above, and the acquisition of transcripts in the Library
of Congress within recent years, but half a century ago a similar interest was
displayed by collectors and historians in New York City, forming three collec-
tions which are to-day in the Lenox Library.

William H. Aspinwall, a merchant, secured among other papers the Chalmers
collection of letters and documents relating to Virginia from 1606 to 1775. They
were in turn sold to Samuel Latham Mitchell Barlow, a lawyer and notable
collector of New York City, from whom a part were purchased by the library,
while others came to the Lenox with the Bancroft transcripts in 1893. Chalmers
had been a clerk in the State paper office and seems to have taken these
extracts, outlines, and sometimes full copies from the Plantation office papers,
since he continually refers to them in his Political Annals.[133] They are modern-
ized transcripts, failing to follow the early orthography, abbreviations, and
capitalization. The writing is cramped and often almost illegible, while the
table of contents is incomplete and useless. They comprise (1) a series of brief
outlines of Privy Council orders; (2) extracts from the Dudley-Carleton papers;
(3) outlines of additional Council orders; (4) a calendar of certain of the colonial
State papers; (5) outlines of council orders dealing with other trading companies.
All of the original documents are at present in the Public Record Office and are
noted in the Bibliographical List of Records following.

The Bancroft papers relating to Virginia and the Simancas Archives are well
bound, clear, and apparently careful, correct, and full copies of the documents
included. The first two volumes of the Bancroft collection bearing on the Virginia
Company are transcripts of many of the documents in the State paper office,
probably made in 1852 by Noel Sainsbury, but the list is not complete. While
the peculiar and characteristic signs of abbreviation are not followed, the orthog-
raphy seems to be accurate throughout. Furthermore, the collection includes
the document entire, unless otherwise indicated. The table of contents is careful
and correct.[134] The "Simancas Archives" is a volume of transcripts of "Papers
in the Simancas Archives relating to the History of Virginia and other portions

of America between 1608 and 1624, made for Alexander Brown and many of
them used by him in his book, The Genesis of the U. S." The only document
relating to Virginia which is not reproduced in that collection is a repetition
of the proclamation of the King of England concerning tobacco, bearing the date
November 12, 1624.