A Family of Reformers: The Weld-Grimké Manuscript Collection 

Please join Curator of Manuscripts Cheney J. Schopieray (pictured right) and University of Michigan School of Information graduate student Tessa Wakefield (pictured left) to discuss the Weld-Grimke manuscript collection and Tessa Wakefield's work to make these papers available for research.

Background: Angelina Grimké, her sister Sarah Grimké, and Angelina's husband Theodore Dwight Weld were renowned abolitionists who knitted together women's rights issues with anti-slavery advocacy beginning in the 1830s.  The William L. Clements Library acquired the papers of Theodore Weld and the Grimké sisters in 1939 and since then, they have been the largest collection of abolitionist papers on the University of Michigan campus.  In 2012, descendants of the Weld family donated a wooden trunk to the Clements Library, filled with nearly 1,000 hitherto unknown letters of the Grimkés, the Welds, and their grandchildren.  These 'new' papers add a wealth of original, primary source documentation on aspects of abolition, women's suffrage, the legacy of the abolitionists, post-Civil War race relations, mental and physical health issues, and other subjects dating largely between 1853 and 1899.  Tying this prominent family to the University of Michigan is Angelina Weld Hamilton, granddaugher of Angelina Grimké and Theodore Weld's who graduated from the University of Michigan Medical College in 1908 and worked for many years as a psychiatrist in the Illinois mental health system. 

The Clements Library opened this rich collection of nationally significant letters to the public for research in the fall of 2016, marking the conclusion of University of Michigan School of Information graduate student Tessa Wakefield's Archival Processing Internship.