Archival Sources, Bibliography, and the Court Cases

Although a major section of this website concerns Josephine Louise Newcomb’s letters in the McConnell family papers (Collection 156, Louisiana Research Collection, Tulane University), the court case letters and other archival materials, as well as secondary sources, offer many insights into the world of JLN, and others like her during the nineteenth century, as well as the College’s history for many years.

In this overall section, you will find a listing of archival sources as well as a bibliography primarily on the history of Newcomb College, and a chronology of the court cases in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries relating to the estate of Josephine Louise Newcomb and the presence in these cases of many letters from and about her.

We have also included a section, Legal and Archival Recordkeeping Surrounding the Letters, which offers an interpretation of how the letters moved between private and public records, how they were accumulated by the attorneys, how some were copied and others retained in original form depending on their use in the court cases.