The papers of George Dutton Watrous consist of office files compiled during his membership on the Connecticut State Bar Examining Committee and on the Yale Law School Curriculum Committee. Included are correspondence, memoranda, printed matter, and other papers. There is also a notebook of models for practical forms, orders, and so forth, to be used in Watrous' law practice, and a small assortment of legal papers and printed forms.
The Connecticut State Bar Examining Committee materials make up over half of the collection. The letters, memoranda, and printed matter filed in the correspondence deal with establishing levels of qualification for the bar, setting up rules and regulations for admission to the bar, individual cases of admission or rejection, and routine matters concerning meetings of the committee. There are also files of bar examination questions and scores of those who took them, as well as miscellaneous memoranda, minutes, and other papers.
The Yale Law School papers deal largely with Watrous' work with the Curriculum Committee, including arranging for teachers of courses and scheduling. Among these papers are letters, memoranda, minutes of faculty meetings, schedules for classes, printed lists of questions for prize orations, essays and theses, as well as an assortment of newspaper clippings and other printed matter.
These papers were donated to Yale University in 1945 by Charles A. Watrous.