Most of the correspondence in the Charles Hutchinson Papers is personal, and reflects Hutchinson's social life and friendships during his school and undergraduate years, as well as the activities of an Army lieutenant during World War II. The series includes correspondence both received and written by Hutchinson. Correspondents include many young friends as well as Hutchinson's mother, Mrs. I. H. Hutchinson (formerly Emily Newbold Bell). Hutchinson was active in the social life and debutante circuit of Philadelphia and New York City as well as his native Jobstown, NJ. Correspondence includes two folders of printed social invitations, as well as one of table cards and calling cards.

Official correspondence from Princeton University reflects undergraduate life of the period during World War II—both before and after American entry into the War—as well as Princeton's condensed schedule, military training and emergency measures for wartime. Hutchinson was part of the class of 1943, many of whose members graduated in January 1943 in order to make them available for the war effort.

Hutchinson trained to be an officer at Fort Sill, OK, in early 1943, as did other Princeton graduates. He was stationed at Fort Bragg, NC from May to December 1943, and afterwards split the time until August, 1944 between Fort Sill and Camp Rucker, AL. Letters from this period shed light on the daily activities and social life of an officer at each of these bases.

Hutchinson served in the European Theater of Operations, sending letters home to his mother in Jobstown from England, September through December 1944, in the form of V-Mail. Letters Hutchinson wrote or typed on V-Mail forms abroad were transferred to microfilm, and printed for the recipient in the United States on photographic paper at a reduced size (roughly 4 x 5 inches). His letters from England do not reflect Army movements or locations, focusing instead on scenery, weather, and social life. Two V-Mail letters are addressed to Mrs. I.H. Hutchinson from Norman Russell, Jr., her nephew, also serving in England in 1944.

Grouped with the correspondence is a daybook (printed in 1903, including notes from various periods, but primarily used by Hutchinson in 1937) reflective of Hutchinson's social engagements, as well as a handwritten schedule for December, 1938 and calendar pages from 1939 and 1940. One notebook contains addresses for invitees to Hutchinson's Lawrenceville School commencement in 1939.

Much of the correspondence, particularly from the school periods, is undated. When dates and postmarks are absent, letters have been categorized as belonging to Lawrenceville or Princeton periods with more or less certainty based on stationery or content.

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Schoolwork includes notes and notebooks as well as graded papers and exams from both the Lawrenceville School and Princeton University. Lawrenceville School material includes coursework in Mathematics, American History, English, and Latin. Hutchinson's school compositions include an essay on the "Pinies," people living in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, as well as a tale about the "Jersey Devil." Other essays cover assigned topics such as the work of Shakespeare, Dickens, Browning, Shaw and Lytton Strachey, or the causes of the War of Independence.

At Princeton, Hutchinson majored in Art and Archaeology, and lecture notes from Art and Architecture courses are best represented here, as well as tests and a "terrain exercise" for courses in the Department of Military Science. Hutchinson's summer schedule for 1942 is indicative of the university's initiative for accelerated graduation.

Much of the schoolwork is undated, and has not been assigned to either the Lawrenceville or Princeton period, though it most derives from the period between 1935 and 1943.

Two math notebooks dated 1897 and 1899 may possibly have belonged to Hutchinson's father, Isaac Harrison Hutchinson, Princeton class of 1899.

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Event programs point to some of Hutchinson's pursuits between 1940 and 1942—church services, theatrical productions, a debutante ball, a museum exhibit. Ephemera include items such as membership cards, game tickets, and railroad schedules from the early 1930s through 1944, as well as playing cards, a pen nib, and advertisements. Also included in Series 3 are printed programs from the Lawrenceville School (for commencement 1938 and 1939, for instance), as well as printed materials from the Army, such as the booklet "The Construction of Models for Protective Concealment" (1942) and a Field Artillery School Instruction Memorandum (1942).

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Series 6 contains financial records such as cancelled checks and books of check stubs, bank statements and receipts from both Lawrenceville School and Princeton eras, as well as Hutchinson's meal tickets from the Officers' Mess at Fort Bragg (May through December 1943). A few receipts date from a later period, in 1951, showing purchases for garden and farm supplies. The series also contains a folder of cancelled checks and a bank statement belonging to Martin Franklin, who was Hutchinson's roommate in 3 Blair Tower, during 1942.

Included in this series are two items with unknown relevance to the greater collection. One is a ledger of accounts from 1885-1886 (a Hutchinson appears in the accounts list on the first page, but the ledger's purpose is not clear). The other is an abstract of title for land in Wayne County, Iowa, from 1914, which does not bear the name Hutchinson in its contents.

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