David Davis letter, 1844 December 31 -- CARLI Digital Collections Featured Image

This is the kind of exciting thing we should all be doing! -- collaborating to virtually combine our complementary materials into a single comprehensive resource. Illinois Wesleyan has done it with the David & Sarah Davis Family Correspondence, and they have done it well.

Judge David Davis was responsible for getting Lincoln nominated as the 1860 Republican presidential candidate. Davis and Lincoln were lifelong friends; Lincoln appointed Davis to the Supreme Court in 1862. The collection contains the Davises' correspondence with each other and family and friends. The online project’s recent initial release contains 274 searchable transcribed letters collected from eight institutions. The project intends to grow to over 1500 letters.

IWU has made these letters eminently accessible via the three most important access points for letters.

Chronological: IWU has designed the home page with search features to limit letter retrieval to a particular year or decade.

Author/Recipient: Index boxes enable the user to select an author or recipient to execute a search.

Subject: IWU has performed subject analyses of the letters. An index box lets users select letters based on these themes.

The transcriptionists have done a superb job of representing the original markups and scribbles, as seen in the featured image above. In this letter Davis, unhappy with the election of Polk, writes, "I am tired & sick of the Legislature – since the result of the Presidential election – (So unexpected to me). I have resolved to avoid politics - & to devote myself to money making." Good thing for us he changed his mind.

Written by Mary Rose, Metadata Librarian, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville