Peyton Randolph Gilbert family papers

This small collection contains papers of the Peyton Randolph Gilbert family and of the towns of Gilead and Hebron, Connecticut. Family members include Peyton R. Gilbert's father, Samuel Gilbert (1734-1818), and mother, Deborah Gilbert, his brothers John H. Gilbert and Charles C. Gilbert, his wife, Anna Porter, and his son Edwin Randolph Gilbert (1808-1874). Also represented in the collection are Ralph P. Gilbert, Ralph D. Gilbert, Sylvester Gilbert, and others whose precise connection to Peyton R. Gilbert is unclear.

A number of the Gilberts were involved in legal and political affairs. Samuel Gilbert was chief justice of the Court of Common Pleas for Tolland County, Connecticut, for 21 years. Sylvester Gilbert was a lawyer and justice of the peace, as was Peyton R. Gilbert, while Ralph P. Gilbert, a farmer by trade, was a member of the Connecticut State Legislature in the years 1880 and 1883. As a result, although fragments of family and business correspondence of Edwin R., Ralph P., Ralph D., and Peyton R. Gilbert are in the collection along with the diaries of Ralph P. Gilbert for the years 1878-1884, the majority of the papers are of a financial and legal nature. Included are papers from the legal practices of Samuel and Peyton R. Gilbert, legal papers relating to the Gilbert family (folders 33, 38), and a collection of legal documents of Peyton R. and Ralph Gilbert and other justices of the peace of Tolland County (folders 41-44). The financial papers in the collection are largely concerned with the estates of Samuel and Peyton R. Gilbert (folders 3, 21-22), although there are also lists of taxable property of residents of Hebron (folder 40) and other miscellaneous financial papers (folders 26-32).

Other materials in the collection include papers of the Gilead School Society and of the Gilead Ecclesiastical Society, among the more interesting of which are letters from Albert W. and Nellie P. Clark, missionaries in Bohemia in 1872. There is also a small amount of correspondence belonging to Mary Hutchinson of Gilead, several sermons possibly written by Edwin R. Gilbert, an unidentified copy book, and various other miscellaneous items.