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Wing Family Correspondence

 Collection
Call Number: WA MSS S-4348

Scope and Contents

677 letters relating to the Wing family, 1859 March 7-1926 June 21, and undated. Also present are 96 pieces of ephemera, including invitations and calling cards, postcards, miscellaneous manuscript notes, and a photograph.

Individuals represented in the collection include George W. Wing; wife Mary Elizabeth Gould Wing; daughters Alice Earle Wing and Elizabeth “Bessie” Russell Wing Brace; sons Daniel Gould Wing and Thomas Ellwood Wing; and grandchildren Alice B. Brace, Lloyd DeWitt Brace, Roger Wing Brace, John R. Wing, and Winthrop B. Wing.

Letters primarily concern Wing family affairs taking place in Davenport, Iowa; Lincoln, Nebraska; West Newton, Massachusetts; and Scarsdale, New York.

35 letters concern George Wing’s silver mining efforts in Montana. 16 letters by Elizabeth Wing to various family members document her 1891 trip to Pasadena, Riverside, and Long Beach, California. 18 letters by Alice Wing to various recipients document her work with the YMCA in France during World War I.

Dates

  • 1859-1926

Creator

Conditions Governing Access

This collection is open for research.

Conditions Governing Use

Wing Family Correspondence is the physical property of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Literary rights, including copyright, belong to the authors or their legal heirs and assigns. For further information, consult the appropriate curator.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Purchased from Michael Brown Rare Books, LLC on the William Robertson Coe Fund No. 3, 2018.

Arrangement

Organized into 2 series: I. Correspondence, 1859-1926. II. Ephemera and other papers, 1862-1924.

Extent

3.0 Linear Feet (3 boxes)

Language of Materials

English

Catalog Record

A record for this collection is available in Orbis, the Yale University Library catalog

Persistent URL

https://hdl.handle.net/10079/fa/beinecke.wingfamily

Abstract

677 letters relating to the Wing family, 1859 March 7-1926 June 21, and undated. Also present are 96 pieces of ephemera, including invitations and calling cards, postcards, miscellaneous manuscript notes, and a photograph.

Individuals represented in the collection include George W. Wing; wife Mary Elizabeth Gould Wing; daughters Alice Earle Wing and Elizabeth “Bessie” Russell Wing Brace; sons Daniel Gould Wing and Thomas Ellwood Wing; and grandchildren Alice B. Brace, Lloyd DeWitt Brace, Roger Wing Brace, John R. Wing, and Winthrop B. Wing.

Letters primarily concern Wing family affairs taking place in Davenport, Iowa; Lincoln, Nebraska; West Newton, Massachusetts; and Scarsdale, New York.

35 letters concern George Wing’s silver mining efforts in Montana. 16 letters by Elizabeth Wing to various family members document her 1891 trip to Pasadena, Riverside, and Long Beach, California. 18 letters by Alice Wing to various recipients document her work with the YMCA in France during World War I.

Biographical / Historical

George W. Wing (1833-1918) of Barnstable, Massachusetts, married Mary Elizabeth Gould (1841-1895) of Providence, Rhode Island, in Scott, Iowa, on 1866 June 14. The couple had four children: Daniel Gould Wing (1868-1936), twins Elizabeth "Bessie" Russell Wing Brace (1870-1926) and Alice E. Wing (1870-1920), and Thomas Ellwood Wing (1872- ). The family were Quakers.

In the 1870s and early 1880s, George Wing worked as a bookkeeper in Davenport, Iowa. In 1884, the family moved to Lincoln, Nebraska, where they operated a small fruit and vegetable farm.

Daniel Gould Wing worked as a banker in West Newton, Massachusetts, and was eventually president of the First National Bank of Boston. He was married to Josephine Cabel (1867-1949), with whom he had one child, Katherine Cable Wing (1903-1989).

Elizabeth Brace attended the University of Nebraska in the late 1880s; in 1891, she began working at the school's library. Brace later graduated from the Library School of the Armour Institute of Chicago (the predecessor to the University of Illinois Library School) in 1897, and by 1901 was First Assistant at the University of Nebraska Library (a position she left in 1901 October). She was married to physicist Professor DeWitt B. Brace (1859-1906), with whom she had three children: Lloyd DeWitt Brace (1903-1986), Roger Wing Brace (1904-1966), and Alice B. Brace (1905- ). The family lived in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Alice Wing attended Alma College in Michigan from 1899 to 1901, and graduated from Illinois State Library School in 1904. She worked for a time as Acting Librarian at the Public Library at Albion, Michigan. During World War I, she served with the YMCA in France.

Thomas Wing lived in Scarsdale, New York, and was a senior partner of the law firm Wing, Russell, & Watterson. He was married to Katharine Weston (1871-1903) and later Helen Stanton Bouve (1874-1943), with whom he had two children: John R. Wing (approximately 1912- ) and Winthrop B. Wing (approximately 1913- ).

Processing Information

Collections are processed to a variety of levels, depending on the work necessary to make them usable, their perceived research value, the availability of staff, competing priorities, and whether or not further accruals are expected. The library attempts to provide a basic level of preservation and access for all collections, and does more extensive processing of higher priority collections as time and resources permit. These materials have been arranged and described according to national and local standards.

For more information, please refer to the Beinecke Manuscript Unit Processing Manual.

Descriptive information for this collection is drawn largely from the dealer list.

Title
Guide to the Wing family correspondence
Status
Completed
Author
Sarah Lerner
Date
December 2020
Description rules
Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Part of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library Repository

Contact:
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(203) 432-2977

Location

121 Wall Street
New Haven, CT 06511

Opening Hours

Access Information

The Beinecke Library is open to all Yale University students and faculty, and visiting researchers whose work requires use of its special collections. You will need to bring appropriate photo ID the first time you register. Beinecke is a non-circulating, closed stack library. Paging is done by library staff during business hours. You can request collection material online at least two business days in advance of your visit, using the request links in Archives at Yale. For more information, please see Planning Your Research Visit and consult the Reading Room Policies prior to visiting the library.