Charles Wilkes papers
Language: eng
Number of pages: 6500
Subjects: Correspondence; Commerce; United States. Navy. James River Flotilla; United States. Navy. West India Squadron; United States. Navy. Potomac Flotilla; Trent Affair, 1861; Cholera; Tides; Meteorology; Discovery and exploration; Politics and government; Maps; United States Exploring Expedition (1838-1842); Observations; Confederate States of America. Navy; Scientific expeditions; Confederate States of America; Naval operations; Astronomy; United States; History
Description: Correspondence, letterbooks, journals and diaries, autobiography, scientific tracts and notes detailing weather and tidal observations, legal and financial papers, genealogical charts, printed material, and other papers.  Subjects include Wilkes's command of an expedition (1838-1842) to the Antarctic, islands in the Pacific, and the northwest coast of the U.S.; his work in Washington, D.C., preparing and publishing (1843-1863) information collected by the expedition; his capture of J.M. Mason and John Slidell in the Trent affair (1861); and his command of the James River Flotilla and the West India Squadron during the Civil War.  Subjects include efforts to capture Confederate destroyers, commerce in the North, and dissatisfaction with American leadership during the Civil War; and an outbreak of cholera in Germany in 1873.  Also includes letterbooks (1817-1841) of William Compton Bolton.  Correspondents include Louis Agassiz, James Dwight Dana, Joseph Drayton, Asa Gray, George Brinton McClellan, Fred D. Stuart, and Gideon Welles.

Family papers include correspondence of Charles Wilkes, his children John, Jane, and Eliza, and his wives Jane Renwick Wilkes and Mary Lynch Bolton Wilkes; genealogies; and marriage and building contracts, leases, inventories, promissory notes, trust agreements, and debt records dating from the seventeenth century concerning the family in England and America.
Notes: Open to research.

Microfilm edition of containers 1-31 available, no. 16,501.

Microfilm produced from originals in the Manuscript Division. Washington, D.C. : Library of Congress Photoduplication Service.

Gift, Rosalee Lockwood-Jones, Mrs. M.L. Hull, and C. Denby Wilkes, 1921-1964.

Gift, Gilbert Wilkes and estate of Gilbert Wilkes, 2002-2010.

Naval officer and explorer.

Collection material in English.

Finding aid available in the Library of Congress Manuscript Reading Room and at http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/eadmss.ms002005