Caleb Huse Letters

Collection

Identifier: MSS-0723

No requestable containers

Scope and Contents

This collection consists of six letters dated between July 20, 1859 and December 21, 1904.

Two are typewritten copies of letters from Caleb Huse, Lieutenant U.S. Army at West Point, New York, to Mason Graham, Esquire. The first, dated July 20, 1859, requests information on the cost of living and healthiness of Alexandria, Louisiana, where Huse had applied for the position of superintendent of the Louisiana State University there. The second is dated August 25, 1859 and requests the return of his testimonial letters for the position in Louisiana since it had already been filled. [The originals of these letters are in the “David F. Boyd Papers,” located in the Department of Archives, Louisiana State University.]

There is one holograph letter dated 16 September 1904, from Highland Falls, New York, to Mary Benagh Philips in Columbus, Georgia, transmitting and discussing his “little pamphlet," "The Supplies for the Confederate Army, How They Were Obtained in Europe and How Paid For. Personal Reminiscences and Unpublished History," published in Boston by R. Marvin & Son, 1904.

There are two typed letters, dated December 12 and 21, 1904, from Thomas M. Owen, Director, Alabama State Department of Archives and History, asking for Huse's reminiscences of the University of Alabama in 1860–1861; and one holograph letter, dated December 16, 1904 from Huse to Owens about the request.

Dates

Creation: 1859 - 1904

Biographical / Historical

Caleb Huse was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts on February 11, 1831. He entered the Military Academy at West Point in 1847 and graduated 7th in his class from that institution in 1851. He spent most of his commission as a Brevet Second Lieutenant as a chemistry instructor at West Point. In 1860 he accepted a position as the superintendent of the newly formed military school at the University of Alabama. In 1861, Jefferson Davis commissioned Huse to act as the European arms and munitions purchasing agent for the Confederate Army. He remained abroad until the end of the war in and returned to the United States in 1868 and became headmaster of a tutoring academy. One of his pupils in 1882 was a young John Pershing who would later lead the American Expeditionary Force during World War I. He died March 13, 1905 in Highland Fall, New York at the age of 75.

Extent

0.1 Linear Feet (6 items)

Language of Materials

English

Additional Description

Abstract

Six letters dated between July 20, 1859 and December 21, 1904, including two to Mason Graham in 1859, concerning the chair of mathematics and the superintendancy at Louisiana State University; one to Mary Benagh Philip in 1904, regarding a pamphlet he wrote about Confederate Army supply lines; two in 1904 from Thomas M. Owen of the Alabama State Department of Archives and History asking about Huse's memories of being a student at the University of Alabama; and one in reply to Owen.