Proposal for Compilation of a Guide to Unpublished Documentation Relating to Africa in the United States

Abstract

The variety and volume of Africa-related record, archival and manuscript materials in the United States today are only partially known. However, in view of the extensive American commercial, missionary, philanthropic, scientific, governmental and other contacts with the African continent over the past three centuries or more, as well as the activities of manuscript collectors, the total is probably quite considerable. Illustrative of what is already known to exist are the following descriptive entries adapted from a recently published general guide to the archival and manuscript holdings of American depositories: (1) papers of Zachary Macaulay--philanthropist, abolitionist, editor, and early Governor of Sierra Leone -- and his family, 1793-1888, 1014 pieces (in the Huntingdon Library, San Marino, California); (2) archives of the American Colonization Society, including materials on Liberia, 1816-19 08, 626 vols., 32 boxes, and 4 bundles (in the Library of Congress); (3) papers of Edmund Roberts, merchant, diplomatic agent in the Far East and Africa, and negotiator of the 1833 commercial treaty between the United States and Zanzibar, 1805-36, 10 vols, and 5 boxes (in the Library of Congress); (4) papers of Richard Palmer Waters during his ante-bellum term as U. S. Consul in Zanzibar (in the Peabody Museum, Salem, Massachusetts); (5) papers of Henry S. Sanford, Minister to Belgium, associate of Leopold II in connection with his Congo operations, and member of the American delegation to the 1884-85 Berlin African Congress, 1838-91, c. 10,000 pieces (in the Sanford Memorial Library, Sanford, Florida); (6) papers of John A. Kasson, politician, diplomat, and head of the American delegation to the Berlin Congress, 1877-1910, c. 1 200 items (at the Iowa State Department of History and Archives, Des Moines, Iowa); and (7) records of the foreign missionary activities of the Congregational churches (chiefly) in Angola, 1880-date, French Equatorial Africa, 1842-70, Liberia, 1834-42, South Africa, 1835-date, and Southern Rhodesia, 1893-date (among the materials deposited by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions at the Houghton Library, Harvard University).