Primarily letters to Mann from his family and the family of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Correspondents include Sophia Hawthorne, Rose Hawthorne, Una Hawthorne, brother George Mann, mother Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, and Elizabeth Peabody. Topics include family activities and travels, especially comments on Mann's descriptions of San Francisco and the Sandwich Islands [now the Hawaiian Islands]; Nathaniel Hawthorne's death and burial; Abraham Lincoln's death and burial; and opinions about Civil War events, battles, and personalities. Includes a letter from Elizabeth Peabody (undated) describing her two visits to President Lincoln and mentioning General Hitchcock's opinions about Lincoln and the Civil War. In addition, there is a carte-de-visite of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Acquired as part of the Alfred and Elizabeth Brand Collection of Rare Books and Manuscripts.
The bulk of the letters cover the years before the American Civil War when John Emory Bryant (JEB) and Emma Spaulding were in Maine, during the Civil War when JEB was at Port Royal and Hilton Head, S.C., during Reconstruction in Georgia (1865-1887), and the remaining years in New York (1888-1900). The letters document JEB's life as a soldier, his courtship and relationship with his wife Emma Spaulding, his involvement in the Republican Party, temperance organizations, the Freedman's Bureau, and the Methodist Episcopal Church, as well as his relationships with other politicians such as President Ulysses S. Grant, James Atkins, Governor Rufus Bullock, and Foster Blodgett, including prominent African-American politicians of the time such as Henry McNeal Turner and William Anderson Pledger.
Collection consists largely of correspondence between family members, friends, and business associates spanning three generations, as well as some Civil War and early Reconstruction letters relating to Hopkins' activities in New Orleans. Correspondents include Hopkins' daughter, Elizabeth; her husband Alfred Lawrence Aiken, a prominent banker in Boston; the Gadsden family of Charleston, S.C.; and the Peck family, relatives of Hopkins' wife, Lizzie. An information folder chronologically lists a portion of the collection. Also included in this collection are a few legal papers, financial papers, addresses and writings, pictures, and a miscellaneous folder that includes some genealogy. Subjects mentioned in the letters include travel in the U.S. and Europe, marriage and family life, illness, Williams College, Yale College, politics, law,"bloodletting with leeches," Civil War activities, and The Worcester Continentals.