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Columbia University's Libraries Launch The Papers of John Jay, 1745-1829
NEW YORK, December 13, 2002 Columbia University Libraries has launched
The Papers of John Jay, 1745-1829, an
image database and indexing tool comprised of thousands of pages
scanned from photocopies and abstracts of original documents
gathered from over 50 repositories by the John Jay
publication project staff during the 1960s and 1970s. This new tool
provides access to correspondence, memos, diaries, and diplomatic
papers written by or to Jay, diplomat and first Chief Justice of
the Supreme Court, and an early graduate of King's College.
These files, collected under the direction of the late
Professor Richard B. Morris, were maintained as
sources for items to be used in a planned four-volume letterpress
series entitled The Selected Unpublished Papers of John
Jay. On the database, four essays, in addition to a
biographical essay, introduce Jay: "The Jay Treaty,"
"Jay and New York," "Jay and Slavery," and
"Jay and France."
The Papers of John Jay, 1745-1829 is
now available on the Web without restriction at:
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/eresources/archives/jay/
 The original
documents from which Morris made his copies are located at
repositories in the United States, Britain, France, Spain and
around the world. A full list of participating institutions,
whose cooperation in the project is gratefully acknowledged,
is available on the project's Web site. The core 5,000
documents in the database come from originals included in the
John Jay holdings in Columbia University's Rare Book and
Manuscript Library. Approximately 23,000 pages of the nearly
12,000 documents have been scanned as images linked to the
collection's index, enabling researchers to examine the
handwritten texts online. Funded by the National
Endowment for the Humanities and The Florence
Gould Foundation, The Papers of John Jay,
1745-1829 makes available to students and researchers
primary resources that have in the past been difficult to find
or link to one another.
"John Jay is the forgotten man among the Founding
Fathers," explained Professor Richard L.
Bushman, Gouverneur Morris Emeritus Professor of History.
"His name is rarely placed in the great pantheon. Yet in
addition to being Chief Justice, he was Secretary of Foreign
Affairs of the Confederation, an author with Hamilton and Madison
of several issues of the Federalist, a leader in the fight for the
ratification of the Constitution in New York, and George
Washington's prime negotiator in the struggle with Britain that
resulted in the controversial 1794 treaty that bears his name. The
publication of the Jay papers in electronic form will permit
scholars everywhere to learn more about the achievements of this
eminent figure."
"Perhaps the most significant accomplishment of the Jay
Papers project is the creation of a 'virtual archive,'
bringing together the holdings of many different and
widely-dispersed physical collections," said Stephen
Davis, acting head of the Libraries Digital Program.
"Because the project's technical design takes full
advantage of Columbia's existing digital library
infrastructure, including our locally-developed, SQL-based master
metadata file, we were able to focus our energies on extending
those tools to accommodate the specialized search, retrieval and
display requirements of this new resource. For example, users of
the Jay Papers database can not only retrieve all correspondence to
or from specific individuals, and search through document abstracts
by keyword, they can also step through each day, week, month and
year of John Jay's life to study his and his
correspondents' writings in context and in sequence."
Davis said, "The Jay Papers project has also provided us
our first opportunity to use the newer 'mrsid' image
wavelet compression technology. This was particularly important
because of the wide variety of handwriting styles and document
sizes involved. Using the multi-resolution, zoomable image display
provided by 'mrsid' technology, readers can themselves
adjust the size of the page as needed to display and analyze
individual handwritten documents."
John Jay served as Governor of New York State
from 1797-1801, in addition to his prominent national and
international roles, and was instrumental in the establishment of
the Protestant Episcopal Church in America. A founder of the New
York Manumission society, he introduced legislation prohibiting
slavery in the state as early as 1777, and, with his sons Peter and
William, continued his anti-slavery activities after his retirement
from public life.
The Papers include letters to and from many of the central
figures in the struggle for independence and the early history of
the United States - among them George Washington,
John Adams, James Monroe,
Louis XVI of France, the Marquis de
Lafayette, Benjamin Franklin,
Patrick Henry, Gouverneur Morris,
Abigail Adams, and Benjamin Rush.
Correspondence between Jay and his lively, astute wife Sarah
Livingston Jay captures the flavor of domestic life in the Federal
period and serves to document the complex interplay between private
and public interests that characterized the political scene. Topics
that may be explored include farming, building, philanthropy, legal
practice, the courts, education, political intrigue, health, and
what might be called "memorializing the revolution" in
the early nineteenth-century.
Morris collected the photocopies between 1959 and 1989 for his
proposed four-volume edition of selected unpublished Jay papers.
Only two volumes (John Jay: The Making of a Revolutionary:
Unpublished Papers, 1745-1780 and John Jay: The Winning of
the Peace: Unpublished Papers, 1780-1784) appeared before
Morris's death in 1989. Originally at Columbia's Jay
Project office, the photocopies were transferred to
Columbia's Rare Book and Manuscript Library in
1996, where they supplement more than 38 linear feet of Jay family
papers and an extensive Jay family collection. Volumes III and IV
of the letterpress edition, to be edited by Dr. Mary-Jo
Kline and scheduled for publication in 2005-2006, will
take up where the Morris volumes left off, providing context and
editorial enhancements for the most significant documents relating
to or dating from Jay's final four decades.
The Papers of John Jay, 1745-1829 is a work in progress
that will expand as new documents and additional searching features
are added. It is a joint project of Columbia's Rare Book and
Manuscript Library and the Libraries Digital Program
Division. Together they will maintain the site and
continue its development for research and teaching. Information
about the Libraries Digital Projects may be found on
LibraryWeb:
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/projects/digital/
Columbia University Libraries is one of the top
ten academic library systems in the nation, with 7.5 million
volumes, 49,000 serials, as well as extensive collections of
electronic resources, manuscripts, rare books, microforms and other
non-print formats. The collections and services are organized into
22 libraries, supporting specific academic or professional
disciplines. The Library's web site is
a gateway to the print and electronic collections and to
services.
For information: Jean W. Ashton, Director, Rare Book and
Manuscript Library, (212) 854-5153.
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