Call Number:

C1005

Repository:

Princeton University Library: Manuscripts Division

Extent:

• 1 box
• 0.2 linear feet

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

Citations should be as follows: Edward Raymond Ames Family Collection, Box #, Folder #, Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

Date:

1823-1855 (inclusive)

Creator:

Princeton University. Library. Special Collections and Ames, Edward Raymond, 1806-1879

Form:

Correspondence -- 19th century, Diaries -- 19th century, and Manuscripts, American--19th century.

Abstract:

Consists of diaries and family correspondence of itinerant clergyman Edward Raymond Ames.

Edward Raymond Ames was born in Amesville, Ohio, on May 20, 1806 and died in Baltimore, on April 25, 1879. He became a Methodist, and in 1828 traveled to Illinois where, in Lebanon, he founded the school which later became McKendree College. In 1830 Ames joined the Indiana Methodist Episcopal conference, became a traveling preacher, and rode through the South and West, and among the Indian tribes, a distance of more than 25,000 miles. During his twenty years of traveling, he served as the chaplain of the Choctaw General Council at the tribe's request and as president of Asbury College. In 1852 he was elected bishop at a Boston conference.

The collection consists of two of Ames' diaries and 21 letters of Ames family members: Edward Raymond Ames, his mother, Nabby L. Ames, his wife, Henrietta Beach Ames, her brother, William D. Beach, her sister, Julia Beach, and her father, Samuel Beach. The first diary (14 pp.), dated Dec. 18-30, 1852, tells of Ames being sent to California to preside over conferences of the Methodist churches in California and Oregon. The second diary covers events of the year 1855. The bulk of the correspondence took place during the time when Ames joined the Indiana Methodist Episcopal conference and became an itinerant minister (1830s-1850s). The letters to his wife, written from the various cities that he travelled to, provide a firsthand account of an itinerant clergyman's life.

Organized by form (diaries and correspondence); correspondence arranged alphabetically by correspondent.