Thatcher family papers

Collection — Multiple Containers

Identifier: 3355

Scope and content

Includes letters (in part, transcripts), genealogies, diaries, account books and receipts, scrapbooks, photographs, and miscellany of the related families of Vorhis (van Voorhees), Purdy, Patchen, Thatcher, Barrett, and Williams. Letters (1832-1839) to Steven Vorhis from father Jotham, brother Joseph, and friend David M. Underwood touch on religious problems, abolition, friends, and farming in Spencer, New York; from Stephen Vorhis, who served as minister in Akron, Ohio, as pastor of the Congregational Church of Danby, New York, and, after ministries in Phoenix and Hammondsport, New York, returned to Spencer as pastor of the Presbyterian Church, to his fiancee Elizabeth S. Lowe, concerning their differences of opinion on religious beliefs and his impending decision to rejoin the Presbyterian church, and to Louisa (Ann Louisa Lord), who became his second wife. Other letters (1840-1845) are to Elisha and Sarah Thatcher from David D. and Elizabeth Shannon; to Jeremiah Thatcher (unsigned) about Western land; from R. Taylor to Daniel W. Taylor; from A.C. Patchen to his aunt, Polly Thatcher; also letters from Clara and Ettie Barrett to sister Libbie and from Clara Barrett Williams to her husband, James, concerning farm life, household chores, dressmaking, and the Temperance Movement in the 1880s; letters (1890) of recommendation for Louis Grant Thatcher ('90) from Cornell University professors;

Scope and content

letters (1943-1949) from Robert B. Brewer, a paratrooper, written from various places in Europe to his "adopted" family, Carlos and Mary Williams. Genealogical material includes a history of the family and descendants of Stephen Coerte van Voorhees.