George Washington is one of twenty-three presidents whose papers are in the Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. The Papers of George Washington was microfilmed in 1964 as part of the Presidential Papers Project instituted by Congress in 1957. The Washington Papers has now become the first manuscript collection to be digitized in its entirety from microfilm.
The collection is available online in its entirety. Digital images of negative-format photostats of three letterbooks (28, 29, and 30 of Series 2) owned by the National Archives and Records Administration and microfilmed with the Washington Papers have been replaced with positive-format digital images from film provided by the National Archives.
Selected original items from the Addenda to the George Washington Papers have been digitized and added to the online collection as well. These letters, survey documents, and other materials were acquired after the bulk of the collection had been processed and microfilmed.
The Diaries of George Washington
Accompanying the George Washington Papers online is Donald Jackson and Dorothy Twohig, eds., The Diaries of George Washington, 6 vols. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1976-79), a series of The Papers of George Washington. Copyright and Other Restrictions
The Diaries is presented in two formats, digital images and searchable text. The digital images--bitonal, grayscale, and color--provide facsimiles of the published volumes. The searchable text contains updates to the editors' annotations or notes that are not in the published version. These updates were provided by the editors of the Diaries at the University of Virginia's George Washington Papers project. They include small changes to dates and names and the addition of information not available when the volumes were first published from 1976 through 1979. The George Washington Papers project was established in 1969 at the University of Virginia under the joint auspices of the University and the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association of the Union. The project is publishing The Papers of George Washington in five series that include Washington's correspondence, diaries, and many other kinds of documents. The project has also edited a one-volume abridged edition of The Diaries of George Washington, published by the University of Virginia Press.
Transcriptions
Since Congress first approved the purchase of the George Washington Papers in June 1834, the publication of edited documentary editions has been unceasing, beginning with Jared Sparks's 1833-1837 twelve-volume edition to the present-day multi-series edition at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. Selected Bibliography
Transcriptions that accompany some of the digital images of correspondence in letterbooks in Series 3 and 5, and of scattered incoming correspondence in Series 4, are taken from the following editions
Fitzpatrick,John C., ed. The Writings of Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745-1799. 39 vols. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1931-1944; reprint, New York: Greenwood Press, 1970.
John C. Fitzpatrick was Chief of the Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, in the 1930s and '40s when he edited the 39-volume The Writings of Washington. Reprinted in 1970 by Greenwood Press, the edition has been, and continues to be, a mainstay for general audiences and scholars.
Annotation text for the Revolutionary War Expense Account, 1775-1783 (Series 5) is taken from
George Washington's Accounts of Expenses While Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, 1775-1783. Reproduced in facsimile with annotations by John C. Fitzpatrick. Boston; New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1917.
Transcriptions that accompany digital images of most incoming correspondence for the years 1752 through 1775 in Series 4 are taken from
Hamilton, Stanislaus Murray, ed. Letters to Washington and Accompanying Papers. Published by the Society of Colonial Dames of America. Boston; New York: Houghton Mifflin and Company; Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1898. 5 vols.
Digital Images and Transcriptions
A few discrepancies may exist between dates seen in the digital image of the original manuscript in Series 4 and that in the accompanying transcription from the Letters to Washington edition. If a date is incomplete in the original manuscript, date information supplied by Library of Congress archivists may differ from that supplied by the editor of Letters to Washington. The documents, however, are one in the same.
Discrepancies in date and text may exist between the digital image of the original manuscript in letterbooks in Series 2 and 3 and the accompanying transcription from the Writings of Washington. The editor of that edition, John C. Fitzpatrick, selected and published recipients' copies of letters and other kinds of documents from other collections in the Library of Congress and from repositories at university and college libraries and historical societies across the nation. For example, occasional date discrepancies between original manuscripts and transcriptions may be due to the editor's preference for a recipient's copy of a letter, which sometimes differs in date from Washington's retained copy in letterbooks in the Washington Papers at the Library of Congress. The recipient's copy was often sent on a different day from that on which it was copied into a letterbook. Washington sometimes made final small changes to the text and these corrections were not always recorded in the letterbook copy. Users, then, in such cases, will actually have the opportunity to view both versions of a letter or document. [See "Yr. Most Humble Obt. Servt.": George Washington's Letterbooks]
For example, the digital image of the letterbook copy of George Washington to Thomas Jefferson is dated November 28, 1789, while the transcription is dated November 30th. A note in the transcription indicates that the original from the Thomas Jefferson Papers at the Library of Congress was used rather than the Washington letterbook copy. The digital image of the letterbook copy of Washington's 1796 Farewell Address is dated September 17, while Fitzpatrick, indicating so in a note, selected the first draft that Washington sent to Alexander Hamilton much earlier, on May 15, 1796.
Very occasionally, there will be no note in the transcription.
An asterisk (*) following the heading of a transcription indicates that the original manuscript of the document Fitzpatrick selected is in Washington's hand.
TABLE OF REPOSITORY SYMBOLS
A table of repository symbols for transcriptions of documents was published in Volume 1 (1931), page lv, of The Writings of Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745-1799.
The following symbols have been used to denote the place of deposit of Washington letters not found in draft or letterbook form in the George Washington Papers in the Library of Congress:
Connecticut Historical Society
[C.H.S.]
Chicago Historical Society
[CH.H.S.]
Clements Library, University of Michigan
[C.L.]
Harvard College Library
[HV.L.]
Haverford College
[HD.C.]
Historical Society of Pennsylvania
[H.S.P.]
Huntington Library
[H.L.]
John Carter Brown Library, Rhode Island
[J.C.B.]
Maine Historical Society
[M.H.S.]
Maryland Historical Society
[MD.H.S.]
Massachusetts Historical Society
[MS.H.S.]
J.P. Morgan Library
[M.L.]
New York Historical Society
[N.Y.H.S.]
New Hampshire Historical Society
[N.H.H.S.]
New York Public Library
[N.Y.P.L.]
New York State Library
[N.Y.S.L.]
Rhode Island Historical Society
[R.I.H.S.]
Rhode Island Society of the Cincinnati
[R.I.S.C.]
Society of the Cincinnati
[S.C.]
University of Pennsylvania Library
[U.P.]
Virginia Historical Society
[V.H.S.]
Virginia State Library
[V.S.L.]
* Indicates that the letter is in Washington's own handwriting
Connecticut Historical Society
[C.H.S.]
Chicago Historical Society
[CH.H.S.]
Clements Library, University of Michigan
[C.L.]
Harvard College Library
[HV.L.]
Haverford College
[HD.C.]
Historical Society of Pennsylvania
[H.S.P.]
Huntington Library
[H.L.]
John Carter Brown Library, Rhode Island
[J.C.B.]
Maine Historical Society
[M.H.S.]
Maryland Historical Society
[MD.H.S.]
Massachusetts Historical Society
[MS.H.S.]
J.P. Morgan Library
[M.L.]
New York Historical Society
[N.Y.H.S.]
New Hampshire Historical Society
[N.H.H.S.]
New York Public Library
[N.Y.P.L.]
New York State Library
[N.Y.S.L.]
Rhode Island Historical Society
[R.I.H.S.]
Rhode Island Society of the Cincinnati
[R.I.S.C.]
Society of the Cincinnati
[S.C.]
University of Pennsylvania Library
[U.P.]
Virginia Historical Society
[V.H.S.]
Virginia State Library
[V.S.L.]