The Labaree Family papers bring together items pertaining to two generations of the Labaree family and the related Schauffler family. The older generation is represented by Benjamin Labaree (1801-1883) and his wife, Eliza Paul Capen (1804?-1835). Preserved here are twenty-four letters (1831-1835) exchanged between them during their courtship and short marriage, containing serious discussions of religion and marriage, and three letters to Eliza's mother, the second of which gives an account of Eliza's death. Benjamin Labaree's unpublished autobiography covers the same period of time and fleshes out the story of their experiences as missionaries and teachers on the Tennessee frontier. He also describes his earlier life as a teacher in North Carolina in the 1820s and his study at Dartmouth College and Andover Theological Seminary. Both the letters and the autobiography reveal a continuing interest in the lives and customs of the people among whom he lived, and particularly in the effects of slavery on both blacks and whites. Labaree also incorporates into his autobiography some family history, recounting the capture by Indians of his grandfather in the 1740s.
Five school notebooks of Eliza P. Capen are included in the collection; these were presumably compiled while she was a teacher at Miss Gilpah Grant's Ipswich Academy, ca. 1829-1830. With these is a transcript of her notes on pedagogy, reprinted in The New England Quarterly for September 1947.
The Labaree-Schauffler family is represented by Benjamin Labaree's great-grandson, Leonard Woods Labaree, a typescript of whose abridgment of "The Christian Fiend" by Rachel Capen Schauffler is included here. This work consists of transcripts of letters to and from Schauffler and Labaree family members and others during World War I. Labaree in his introduction speaks of it as a "common record... of the general experience and a cross-section of the military service...." Included are letters from men in training camps and at the front and from nurses and other women serving overseas.
Other items in the Labaree Family papers are a sermon by Dr. Codman and a sketchbook of James McIntosh, both presumably possessions of Eliza or Benjamin Labaree, and several newspaper clippingsaboutthe Schauffler family. Typed manuscripts of Benjamin Labaree and the correspondence have been made.
These papers were given to Yale University by Leonard Woods Labaree in 1939 and 1948.