The Acquisitions Table: Joseph Dennie Papers

Dennie, Joseph. Papers, 1789-1790.

Joseph Dennie (1768-1812) was born in Boston. After graduating from Harvard College, Dennie studied law in Charlestown, NH. Two years later he began contributing essays to newspapers in New Hampshire and Vermont. In 1796 he became editor of Isaiah Thomas’s The Farmer’s Weekly Museum and continued writing essays. In 1799 Dennie moved to Philadelphia, where he continued his literary career.These letters were written to Dennie’s Harvard classmate Roger Vose. Most of them date from the six-month period beginning in December 1790 during which Dennie was rusticated from Harvard for insolence. When Laura G. Pedder published her edition of Dennie’s letters in 1936, she said that she did not have access to the letters to Vose; but she did include the text of typewritten transcriptions made by the genealogist Thomas Bellows Peck (1842-1915), probably in the 1880s. It will now be possible to compare those transcriptions against the original letters for accuracy and omissions. Purchase, Harry G. Stoddard Memorial Fund.

Published by

Tom Knoles

Marcus A. McCorison Librarian and Curator of Manuscripts

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