by Olaf U. Janzen,
Professor of History (Retired)
Grenfell Campus, Memorial University of Newfoundland
Corner Brook, Newfoundland
A2H 5G4
What is the Colonial Secretary's Letterbook?
According to Jerry Bannister, the Colonial Secretary's Letterbook "is arguably the most valuable archival source for the study of early Newfoundland"; Jerry Bannister, The Rule of the Admirals: Law, Custom, and Naval Government in Newfoundland, 1699-1832 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), p. 108. Personally, I would make that particular argument for the CO 194 papers (for which a separate Finding Aid is also being developed), but I must concede that the Colonial Secretary's Letterbook would come in at a very close second place. Whereas the CO194 papers include a great body of information, including the superb annual "states of the fishery", on which official decisions and policies were based, the information found in rich abundance in the Letterbook reflects the day-to-day affairs of everyday life in early modern Newfoundland.The earliest volume of the Letterbook dates back to 1749, when Governor George Rodney established a system of copying and compiling court proceedings, warrants, commissions, public decrees and official correspondence, as performed by his private clerk or secretary. As these records evolved, they came to include such things as bills of sale, indentures and deeds. By 1813, applications for land leases for agriculture purposes were forwarded to the governor's secretary. He also acted as registrar for civil documents and he received petitions on civil matters, including requests for relief.
These early volumes include records for more than one year. The number of years per volume varies, very quickly becoming fewer per volume as the amount of official paperwork being churned out in Newfoundland began to increase. You will note that each of the early volumes comprises two types of records, each with its own pagination. If you were to use the original bound volumes, you would discover that the "orders and proclamations" appear at one end of the volume; to read the "letters" it is necessary to flip the volume over where a second set of pagination begins. This practice eventually ceased and all the correspondence then appeared, for the most part, in chronological order. Collectively, the documents give us an intimate view of court proceedings, appointments, the activities of the community (for the most part St. John's), governors' commissions and public decrees, warrants, day-to-day military activities, etc.. Jerry Bannister points out that the records of the CO 194 papers and of the Colonial Secretary's Letterbook do "overlap somewhat..., [but] only the latter holds the bulk of legal minutiae produced by local courts..." (Rule of the Admirals, p. 108). Students and scholars exploring the social, political, legal, military, and economic history of Newfoundland in the eighteenth century after 1749 and into the early nineteenth century will therefore find the Colonial Secretary's Letterbook invaluable, and it is with the hope of assisting and simplifying the task of using the Letterbook series that this Finding Aid is being compiled.
Some words of warning -- and a request for assistance
The originals documents are today housed in the Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador. There they are catalogues as GN2/1/A and the volume number. However, we are fortunate to have a microfilm copy of the earliest volumes in the Ferriss Hodgett Library of Grenfell Campus (the "Box No." identified at the beginning of the aid for each individual volume refers to the microfilm box number in our Library). Once we have finished the Finding Aid for these earliest volumes, I hope that we can acquire more reels and expand the Aid.This means that the project is far from complete, and only includes those few volumes held in microform at Grenfell Campus. Users of the Finding Aid should also be warned that errors inevitably appear in spelling or in deciphering names and references; for this we apologize. Should you wish to make suggestions, offer corrections, or just provide a comment, we would be very grateful if you would contact Dr. Olaf U. Janzen so that the necessary changes can be made.Finally, PLEASE NOTE that this is primarily a "finding aid" which simply summarizes the original documents. These are NOT transcripts of those documents. However, the Centre for Newfoundland Studies in St. John's has digitized a set of transcriptions that was made many years ago of much of the correspondence found in the Colonial Secretary's Letterbooks (a small proportion of this correspondence was also duplicated in the CO 194 papers). This 34-volume set, known as the D'Alberti papers (named after Misses Amalia and Leonora D'Alberti,) was prepared for the Privy Council arbitration on the Labrador Boundary Dispute in 1927. The transcripts cover the Letterbooks for the years 1780 to 1825, except for the years 1785-1789 (the volume for those years is missing at both the Provincial Archives and the Centre for Newfoundland Studies). Hot links to these transcriptions have been introduced to the finding aid for those volumes of the Colonial Secretary's Letterbook which have been completed thus far. PLEASE NOTE that each hot link will only take you to the corresponding volume of the D'Albert transcripts, and NOT to a specific page. Once you connect with the volume through the hot link, use the page index located on the RIGHT-hand side of the particular volume of the D'Alberti transcript to get to the page you want. PLEASE ALSO NOTE that these transcriptions include a great many typographical errors, so that users of this finding aid should therefore understand that, wherever such hot links are provided to the transcriptions, they should be used with great caution. Simply put, there is no substitute to examining the original or microform copy of the original.
Acknowledgements
What we post here could not have been achieved without the assistance of students employed each summer as research assistants.
Finding aids are available thus far for the following volumes:
Newfoundland - Colonial Secretary's Letterbook
GN2/1/A, Vol. 1 (1749-1752) GN2/1/A, Vol. 2 (1752-1758) GN2/1/A, Vol. 3 (1759-1765) GN2/1/A, Vol. 4 (1766-1771) GN2/1/A, Vol. 5 (1771-1774) GN2/1/A, Vol. 6 (1774-1777) GN2/1/A, Vol. 7 (1777-1779) GN2/1/A, Vol. 8 (1779-1780) GN2/1/A, Vol. 9 (1780-1783) GN2/1/A, Vol. 10 (1783-1785) GN2/1/A, Vol. 11 (1785-1789) GN2/1/A, Vol. 12 (1789-1797) GN2/1/A, Vol. 13 (1797) GN2/1/A, Vol. 14 (1797-1798) GN2/1/A, Vol. 15 (1798-1800)
last updated: October 20, 2020