The collection is rich in colonial and Revolutionary material; original letters from Plymouth Colony, 1621, 1622,1623—I believe the only ones known; manuscript sermons of the early American ministers; letters of the first bishops, White and Seabury; letters of John André, Nathan Hale, Kosciusko, Pulaski, De Kalb, Steuben, and of great numbers of the general and subordinate officers of the French and Revolutionary wars; William Tudor’s manuscript account of the battle of Bunker Hill; a letter of Aide-de-camp Robert Orhm to the Governor of Pennsylvania relating Braddock’s defeat; the original of Washington’s first Thanksgiving proclamation; the report of the committee of the Continental Congress on its visit to Valley Forge on the distress of the army; the original proceedings of the Commissioners of the Colonies at Cambridge for the organization of the Continental army; original returns of the Hessians captured at Princeton; orderly books of the Continental army; manuscripts and surveys of the early explorers; letters of Lafitte, the pirate, Paul Jones, Captain Lawrence, Bainbridge, and so on. Documents relating to the Washington family are very remarkable: the original will of Lawrence Washington bequeathing Mount Vernon to George; will of John Custis to his family; letters of Martha, of Mary, the mother of George, of Betty Lewis, his sister, of all his step and grand children of the Custis family. In music there are the original manuscript compositions of all the leading musicians in our modern world, and there is a large collection of the choral books from ancient monasteries and churches. There are exquisite illuminated missals on parchment of all periods from the eighth century. Of the large array of Bibles and other early printed books it is impossible to speak, except in a general way. There is a copy of the first English Bible, Coverdale’s, also of the very rare second Matthews, and of most of the other editions of the English Bible; the first Scotch, Irish, French, Welsh, and German Luther Bibles; the first Eliot’s Indian Bible, of 1662, and the second, of 1685; the first American Bibles; the first American primers, almanacs, newspapers, and the first patent, issued in 1794; the first book printed in Boston; the first printed accounts of New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia; the first picture of New York City, an original plan of the city in 1700, and one of it in 1765; early surveys of Boston, Philadelphia, and New York; the earliest maps of America, including the first, second, and third map of the world in which America appears.