Item 8: Letter from W[illiam] C[ullen] Bryant to R[obert] C[assie]. Walerston, 1871 August 9
Item — Box: 11, Folder: 8
Dates
- Created: 1871 August 9
Creator
- Bryant, William Cullen, 1794-1878 (Person)
Disclaimer for Name and Subject Authorities
Some of the name and subject authority tags have been assigned by educated guessing and estimation of persons and subjects by region, age, profession, and familial relationships. They have been thoroughly researched by using primary and secondary sources available digitally, and named in each description, or in some cases linked directly to the person tag.
Access:
All series and subseries within this collection are open for research, with the exception of a few files within the Academia series that are restricted. The Academia series contains financial and sensitive institutional records from Wilkes College, and financial report records from Princeton University that will remain restricted for 80 years upon creation.
Extent
1 items
Language of Materials
From the Collection: English
Type of Material:
Letter
Condition Note:
Good.
Measurements:
7 9/16 in. x 5 1/16 in.
Description:
This is a letter from William Cullen Bryant to Reverend Robert Cassie Waterston on August 9, 1871. Within the letter, Bryant thanks and invites his friend Waterston to a committee to which he belongs. In the letter he references in his postscript that his daughter, Julia Sands Bryant Bryant, sends her love to the reverend and his wife and she has an engagement on the first of September but they expect to see Mr. and Mrs. Waterston before that time.
William Cullen Bryant was born in 1794 and was an American journalist, romantic poet, and long-time editor of the New York Evening Post. He began his career as a lawyer but found love for poetry and became one of the most recognized poets and literary figures of early America, rivaling only Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Ralph Waldo Emerson. After moving to New York he worked as an editor for many newspapers, including the New-York Evening Post for 50 years. His most famous poem is “Thanatopsis” which established his career as a poet.
Robert Cassie Waterston was born in 1812 in Kennebuck, Main and studied theology at Harvard University for three years and was ordained a Unitarian minister in 1839. He and his wife, Anne Cabot Lowell Quincy, who was the daughter of President Josiah Quincy of Harvard, became good friends of the Bryant family. Waterston was associated for many years with the Pitts Street Unitarian Chapel in Boston, Massachusetts and pastor for seven years at the Unitarian Church of the Saviour in Boston. He devoted a lot of his time to literature and a long list of his papers is given in Putnam’s Singers and Songs of the Liberal Faith published in 1874. He took an interest in educational matters as well. He contributed one hymn to the American Unitarian Cheshire Pastoral Association Christian Hymns published in 1844 as well as to his own popular Supplement to Greenwood’s Psalms and Hymns published in 1845, and others to various works. For more primary sources on Robert Cassie Waterston, please see this University of Michigan finding aid which holds some of his and his father’s diaries.
Location:
Cummington, MA
Transcription:
Cummington [Massachusetts] August 9th 1871.
Dear Mr. Waterston,
I got your letter last evening. Thank you for it and your promise to come to this place. The timely showers are brightening the earth for you and Mrs. Walerston, to whom present my service.
I send an answer to the invitation of the Committee to which you belong.
Yours faithfully
W. C. Bryant
Rev. R. C Walerston
Julie sends her love to you both. She has an engagement at Lenox on the first of September but we shall expect to see you before that time.
W. C. B.
Creator
- Bryant, William Cullen, 1794-1878 (Person)
Repository Details
Part of the Wilkes University Archives Repository
Contact:
84 W South St.
Wilkes-Barre PA 18701 US
570-408-2000
570-408-7823 (Fax)
ask.archives@wilkes.edu
84 W South St.
Wilkes-Barre PA 18701 US
570-408-2000
570-408-7823 (Fax)
ask.archives@wilkes.edu