William Page and Page Family papers, 1815-1947, bulk 1843-1892

Letters in this series include the personal and professional correspondence of William Page, his wife, Sophia Candace Stevens Page, and their families, as well as correspondence of Sophia Page's first husband Stephen Hitchcock and his family.

William Page's correspondence is found from 1833 to 1885 only, with the bulk of his correspondence dating from 1852 to 1877. Drafts of outgoing letters written by William and Sophia Page are found throughout the series. Correspondence is arranged chronologically, with undated correspondence filed alphabetically by author at the end of the series. Correspondence of Page's children, which is voluminous from the early 1880s onward, and other family correspondence of the Page, Stevens, and Hitchcock families has not been indexed.

The earliest correspondence is that of Page's relatives of the Mathies, Dunnel, and Baldwin families of New York State. From 1840 through 1852, much of the correspondence is that of the Hitchcock family. See Series 2.3 for correspondence between Sophia and Steven Hitchcock. Love letters between William Page and Sophia (then Hitchcock) are prevalent in 1857, the year they were married. Family correspondence among Sophia Page, her parents, and her brothers Henry, B. Frank, and Simon Stevens is prevalent from the 1850s through the 1880s. By 1884, much of the correspondence is that of the Page children, including their personal, business, and family correspondence. A long, amorous correspondence from Charlotte "Sharly" Briggs to Candace "Dacie" Page, which documents an apparently intimate relationship between the two women, is found from the late 1880s onward, with many undated letters.

William Page's significant correspondents include artists such as Thomas Hicks, Enoch Wood Perry, William Stark, Theodore Tilton, and Lemuel Wilmarth; patrons Wendell Phillips, J. Hopper, William Walker Scranton, and Francis G. Shaw; writers James Russell Lowell, Charles Frederick Briggs (see also Series 2.2), George W. Curtis, and the actress Charlotte Cushman. An unusually lengthy letter from Page to a young artist "W" (possibly William Stark) about painting is dated 1860. Sophia Page's correspondents include Thomas K. Beecher, Mary Olmsted and Bertha Olmsted.

See Appendix for a list of selected correspondents from Series 2.1.

Letters in this series are from writer and editor Charles Frederick Briggs to William Page and to poet James Russell Lowell from the mid-1840s. A draft of a single letter from Page to Briggs is also found. Briggs' lengthy letters discuss personal matters, matters relating to Briggs' publishing projects, current political figures, writings by Lowell and Page, and theoretical ideas about literature and art. Also found are two manuscripts of Briggs' comedic poems based on the character of Harry Franco, enclosed in letters to Lowell (1843) and Page (undated). Scattered, brief letters from Briggs to Page from a later period can be found in General Correspondence.

Letters in this series are between Sophia (then Stevens) and her first husband, Stephen W. Hitchcock, whose brief marriage lasted from 1851 to 1852, when Hitchcock died. Content of letters is of a personal nature. Letters in the first two folders were sewn together, and others appear to have been sewn together at one time. These letters appear to have been used as legal evidence in an unspecified trial, perhaps the contestation of William Page's will in 1886-1887. For additional documents related to legal matters, see Personal Business Records. Additional materials related to her first marriage are found in Sophia Page's writings.

The letters in this subseries have not been digitized.