Have you ever read someone’s handwriting that’s just un-readable...looked over a note from a friend or loved one and said, “how do you expect me to read this?!”
We found ourselves in this exact situation while examining three handwritten letters in Staatsburgh’s archives. Unfortunately, we could not ask the sender what they had written, because the sender was the 8th President of the United States, Martin van Buren (who has been dead for 162 years!). However, the researchers at the Papers of Martin Van Buren Project at Cumberland University were kind enough to stand-in for the President and transcribe his difficult handwriting for us. These three letters reveal a complicated political relationship, but a close personal friendship, between Van Buren and Staatsburgh’s founder, Morgan Lewis.
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Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery.
