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Correspondence, chiefly 1803-1839, of members of the Monroe family while in London, England, Paris, France and in Virginia. Includes letters received by James Monroe while minister to Great Britain, from Sir Alexander Munro; letters of George Hay and his wife, James Monroe's daughter, Eliza Kortright (Monroe) Hay. Letters contain information concerning Hortensia (Hay) Rogers and Lloyd Nicholas Rogers. These letters deal primarily with family matters, but include material on the French Revolution and on the Napoleonic Wars. Collection includes Kortright genealogy.

Papers, 1795-1834 and undated of Eliza Kortright Monroe Hay (1787-1840), daughter of U.S. President James Monroe. The collection includes letters written by and to Hay and to her father James Monroe. Correspondents include her former teacher Madame [Jeanne Louise Henriette] Campan, her daughter Hortensia M. Rogers of "Druid Hill" near Baltimore, Maryland, her son-in-law Lloyd N. Rogers as well as the daughter of the Marquis de Lafayette, Marie Antoinette Virginie de Lafayette Lasteyrie du Saillant. Subjects include the debts and final illness of James Monroe, the final illness of George Hay, the possible sale by the Hay family of "Ashfield," [near Richmond, Virginia], the aftermath of the French Revolution, Hortense de Beauharnais (the stepdaughter of Napoleon and the mother of Napoleon III), Samuel L. Gouverneur and his wife Maria Hester Monroe Gouverneur, Tench Ringgold, and Egbert Read Watson.

This collection of historic manuscripts dates from 1607-1933, with the bulk of materials dating from 1738-1868. The correspondence, journals and diaries, legal and financial records, estate documents, and printed ephemera in the collection primarily relate to the Washington and Custis families, the Revolutionary War, and society life in antebellum Washington D.C. and Virginia.