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The Capital and the Bay: Narratives of Washington and the Chesapeake Bay Region, ca. 1600-1925
The Calvert papers, Vol ISUPPLEMENTARY NOTE.
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When the Calvert Papers were presented to the Society on the 10th December last the corresponding secretary, in concluding his account of their finding, expressed the hope that some member, visiting England, might feel sufficient interest in the subject to ascertain, if possible, the facts, first as to whether these papers are those supposed to have been contained in the two chests seen in the British Museum in 1839; and second in regard to the papers said to have been buried. It is therefore with much satisfaction that we are enabled to state that during the past summer Mr. Julian LeRoy White, a member of this Society, undertook the investigation with results which he narrates in the following letter, read at the October meeting of the Society.
Mendes Cohen,
Corresponding Secretary.
November 1, 1889.
Baltimore, October 9, 1889.
Dear Sir,--
According to your request I give you an account of the search for the Calvert papers alleged to have been buried.
On the 9th of July last I met Col. Harford by appointment at "Down Place." He showed me the rubbish heap on his grounds where his former butler, Keep, had as the result of his instructions buried the papers eight or ten years ago. He was uncertain as to date, exact site or quantity or quality of papers buried, but was quite willing that I should examine the ground, and was altogether very obliging, taking trouble to assist me.
After no little effort Keep, the former servant of Col. Harford, was found in London and brought to "Down Place," where I had already provided a small force of laborers.
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Keep told me that he had buried the papers because they would not burn. He had first been told to burn them, he said, and I gathered from him that the best looking papers were removed from the heap before they were dumped by him loosely, and not enclosed in any box or chest, into a hole prepared by him. These selected documents I understood were included in the collection which we secured last year.
Col. Harford's mother, Keep said, was very careful of these papers, but at her death the place was for rent and the tenant objected to having this load of papers kicking about in the cellar--hence the order to burn.
Keep said that he had taken his bearings carefully at the time of the burial, thinking that the documents might be wanted again; and showed me exactly where the papers should be within a foot or two.
Here with three men to dig we worked away until we had pretty well examined a space of more than ten feet square, going down below the lowest point that Keep could have reached, cutting through roots of trees and into quite wet ground. We found nothing of the papers.
While the work was proceeding Col. and Mrs. Harford came and looked over an adjoining fence. Mrs. H. said to me: "I wonder if he ever buried them."
This in brief describes the search which was most carefully made, and which covered a period of several days, in fact from the 5th to the 17th July.
The conclusion would seem to be, that the papers were either entirely destroyed before our search by their long exposure in the damp earth; or they were never buried, but possibly sold as old parchment or waste paper. The latter alternative seems the more probable as it is hardly possible that if buried there should have been no vestige left of this mass of documents, many of which were of parchment.
I need not say that I regret very much that I could find nothing to bring back to the Society.
Believe me,
Yours very truly,
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