| Abstract: | Henry Clay Reed, historian and University of Delaware professor, was born 15 May
1899, in Tyrone, Pennsylvania. He served the University of Delaware for forty[...] years,
researching, teaching, writing, and editing numerous articles and books. He helped create and
guide the American Studies program at the University, serving as the first chairman of the
program and helping to improve the climate for interdisciplinary study. He was also involved
with a number of library, historical, and fraternal projects and organizations. The Henry Clay
Reed Papers, spanning the dates from 1915 – 1974, contains legal documents, photographs,
microfilm, correspondence, research notes, manuscripts, publications, and ephemera from the
historian and University of Delaware professor. The collection will perhaps be most useful to
scholars who share Henry Clay Reed’s research interests. Many of his extensive notes,
transcripts, and manuscript pages consider aspects of crime or punishment both in the secular
legal system and in various Christian denominations in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and
nineteenth centuries. Topics with extensive documentation in the proposed history of Crime and
Punishment in New Jersey include animal cruelty, church discipline, domestic violence,
infanticide, theft, the legal system in relation to servants, apprentices, children, and
slaves, and other topics. Reed’s research interests also included the history of African
Americans in Delaware. Amongst his papers is a manuscript article on the Underground Railroad
in Delaware, with a collection of letters from the 1920-1930s that contain personal
recollections from the niece and grandson of Harriet Beecher Stowe, regarding Stowe’s contacts
with Thomas Garrett, a stationmaster on the Wilmington Underground Railroad. |