Skip to main content
 Sub-Series

Sub-Series I: General Correspondence,, 1959-1965.

Dates

  • 1959-1965.

Scope and Contents

During the early 1960s, HAW's office categorized correspondence into legislative, departmental, and general files, with General Correspondence including the wide range of topics that did not fit into theother two categories. Particular strengths of General Correspondence include:

· Extensive and substantive correspondence regarding the legislation, sponsored by HAW, creating the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Commission;

· Material on New Jersey projects, most notably preparations for the NJ Tercentenary, citizen concerns over highway construction (especially from West Orange concerning the East-West Freeway/Interstate Route 280), jetport siting, Army development of Jersey City's Caven Point, participation of NJ groups in the 1963 March on Washington, and efforts of ITT to acquire government contracts; and

· Correspondence, campaign materials, and other matter related to political affairs, especially the 1960 Presidential and NJ state elections and HAW's 1964 Senate re-election campaign.

General Correspondence also includes extensive material useful for gaining further insight into HAW's activities as a politician (rather than as a legislator) and his activities in connection with maintaining his political viability. In this regard, the sub-series includes correspondence concerning:

· endorsements by HAW of organizations, events, and individual nominees, often with discussion of the political calculations involved;

· satisfaction by HAW's office of routine constituent requests, often with underlying implications for local party politics;

· incoming and outgoing expressions of condolence, congratulations, thanks, and other courtesies; and

· the interaction by HAW and his press secretaries with the press, radio, and television media in publicizing HAW's political philosophy and legislative agenda on migratory labor, mass transportation, Meadowlands development, and other matters. Letters to the editor and some statements, speeches, greetings, and broadcast transcripts by HAW can be found in this sub-series.

The sub-series includes extensive correspondence with other senators and other important political figures, including former President Eisenhower and Vice-President Lyndon Johnson, although the bulk of this consists of non-substantive courtesies and other non-legislative matters. There are several letters from former President Harry Truman, including one in which Truman encourages HAW's support for Kennedy in the 1960 election. Other notable correspondents include Walter Reuther (congratulating HAW for his re-election and reflecting on the promise of technological progress in the interests of social justice and advancement) and the USSR ambassador to the US (recounting the history of "Soviet proposals on exchanges between the USSR Supreme Soviet and the U.S. Congress" between 1955 and 1960 in response to a HAW request). The sub-series also includes a set of several photographs of Thomas A. Edison and subjects related to Edison, apparently given to HAW by the Edison National Historic Site.

Language of Materials

From the Collection:

Undetermined .

Physical Description

(7.75 cubic feet)

Arrangement

General Correspondence is arranged alphabetically by topic, following the original order.

As maintained by HAW's staff, the original files generally appear to have had a chronological orientation; that is, to some extent the files were maintained by year. During processing, this chronological arrangement was removed, collapsing multiple folders from various years into one set covering the entire date range. This was done for several reasons, including the inconsistency of chronological groupings applied by HAW's office by topic, the absence of many topical files for some years during the date range, and the interest in maintaining a coherent subject structure in light of the substantial amount of discards in the sub-series. The dates used in the container list are from the carbon copies of HAW's correspondence. They do not necessarily reflect the dates of all documents in the folder.

Container 590 includes those files with legal size documents that were separated from the rest of the sub-series.

Related Series

· In 1959, HAW's office maintained a short-lived SUBJECT CORRESPONDENCE filing system which included correspondence on some topics that were later categorized as General Correspondence, including material on the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Commission and political affairs.

· The Woodrow Wilson Memorial Commission initiative has significant material throughout the collection. In addition to the other correspondence series mentioned here, material will also be found in the LEGISLATION FILES, NATIONAL INFORMATION FILES, and in SUBJECT FILES.

· From 1959 - 1964, General Correspondence was one of three sets of correspondence files in HAW's office. The other two were DEPARTMENTAL CORRESPONDENCE and the Legislative Correspondence by Subject sub-series of LEGISLATIVE / ISSUE CORRESPONDENCE. Some correspondence of a general nature can be found in those contemporaneous series, particularly on NJ topics, such as highways and other projects.

· For the period 1965 - early 1972, HAW's office combined the legislative, departmental, and most of the general correspondence categories into one filing structure; see CENTRAL CORRESPONDENCE for the general correspondence for that period. (An exception was the "Personal" category of general correspondence, which remained outside the central correspondence files, and remains in this GENERAL, ADMINISTRATIVE, & PUBLIC RELATIONS CORRESPONDENCE series.) Some general correspondence files from 1964 and earlier were carried forward into this new filing structure by HAW's staff, notably the files on NJ highways.

Appraisal and Discard Information

Approximately 12 cubic feet of General Correspondence was discarded by the processing archivists. This consisted primarily of routine requests (e.g., Senate gallery or White House tour passes, government publications, autographs of HAW, etc.), office administration (e.g., newsletter mailing lists, phone bills, etc.), letters from "cranks," items of a departmental "case" nature, routine congratulatory and other courtesy correspondence, applications and essays submitted by high school students for HAW's annual "scholarship" (i.e.,internship) competition, meeting invitations, and the like.

Prior to discarding, all material was reviewed at the item level. Any individual items with useful or substantive content were retained (e.g., correspondence requesting parking passes for individuals on HAW's staff was discarded, but correspondence listing all members of HAW's staff at a point in time was retained; meeting acceptances/regrets were discarded unless they held substantive content about the meeting or participants). In some instances, representative samples of routine materials were retained. Where only selected items were retained, notes on the extent of discards were included by the processing archivist with the retained material. The range of topics originally comprising General Correspondence (as of June 1963) can be found in the first folder of the sub-series. Not all subject files, though, were found for all years included in the sub-series.

General

Index Terms

Index terms were used to identify specific municipalities, institutions, subjects, legislation, etc. having substantive material in folders with descriptions of a mundane nature (e.g., "civil rights" as an index term in the folder "Invitations: Regrets").