2 8                                      Roland Baughman

The gift also contains a letter from Lord Cornwallis to an
unidentified correspondent, dated August 25, 1782, mentioning
Henry Laurens (for whom Cornwallis had been exchanged
several months before); and two important documents in the
hand of John Paul Jones, Sept. 24, 1776, relating to the safe-
conduct granted to certain captured British seamen.

Of great interest is a collection of more than 50 first editions
of Stephen Foster's sheet music, including "Oh Susanna," "Camp-
town Races," "The Old Folks at Home," "Massa's in de Cold
Ground," "Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair," and many others
that Americans have sung and loved for more than a century.

But of unmatched importance and value is a group of Ephrata
imprints and manuscripts representing the transplanting to
America of European folkways by the Ephrata Cloister in Lan¬
caster County, Pennsylvania. The founder of the Cloister was
Johann Conrad Beissel, who died in 1768. He it was who caused
the setting apart of a room in the Cloister, where members of
the sisterhood devoted their time to the making of Fraktur
manuscript copies of Beissel's Turtel Taube ("Turtle Dove")
and the many other hymns he composed and set to his own dis¬
tinctive music. The Berol gift includes five of the eight known
volumes composed by Beissel. The collection actually contains
twelve volumes—five that are either wholly or partly manuscript,
and seven printed versions. This gift by Mr. and Mrs. Berol
places Columbia among the few institutions with significant hold¬
ings in this esoteric field of Americana.

Beyer gift. Mr. Preston Beyer of Bronxville has acquired and
presented to us a fine letter from Brander Matthews to R.U.J.
(probably Robert Underwood Johnson), dated January 11, 1904.

Bonnell gift. Miss Alice H. Bonnell (B.S., 1940) of the Special
Collections Department has presented another group of manu¬
scripts (see Library Columns, May 1962) by or related to the