III. General, 1890-1915

The records of Irving Upson span the years 1890 through 1915, with the bulk of the material from 1900-19145 The collection consists mainly of correspondence pertaining to Upson's roles as Treasurer, Registrar, and Secretary of Rutgers College as well as his role in the Agricultural Station correspondence and his time as the college librarian. The contents of the folders generally end at the time of Upson's death, but there were several folders where Henry Schneeweiss, who succeeded Upson as Treasurer, continued to file material until the end of 1915.

Most of the material consists of correspondence received by Upson and enclosures to those letters, but there are occasional typed drafts or carbon copies of letters written by Upson. One notable item is copy of a letter to William Demarest in 1914 asking to be relieved of his duties as Registrar and suggesting that Luther Martin be given the position.

The original file folders had numbers pre-printed on tabs and this number frequently appears on the upper right hand corner of items filed in those folders. The folder numbers themselves seemed to have no particular significance and were not maintained when the collection was re-foldered. Many of the items have a date hand-written on the upper left hand corner in pencil; as these dates are generally a day or two after the date of the item, it appears that the hand-written date represents the day on which Upson replied or took action on the item.

The records are divided into six series:

Because Upson filled many roles at once and filed most of his correspondence by personal name, many of the folders contain some items relating to more than one of his responsibilities. For example, some of his correspondents in the Treasurer series also wrote to Upson recommending young men for admission to Rutgers. Some of the insurance files include insurance for the Agricultural Station intermixed with insurance for the rest of Rutgers. In some folders Upson is addressed sometimes as Treasurer and sometimes as Registrar by the same person. These items were left in the folder in which they were originally filed.

Please refer to individual series for specific content notes.