Miscellaneous, circa 1875 - 1989

The Alexander Charles Stuart 1831-1898 series preserves original documents from Stuart’s life and secondary source materials documenting recent reassessments of Stuart’s career. The core of the series is 61 letters written to Stuart between 1865 to 1887, a majority of which are from the Harlan & Hollingsworth Company of Wilmington, Delaware. The collection contains unique ephemera, such as Stuart’s commuter passes for the Wilmington-Thurlow Railway, and a handwritten agreement between Stuart and H. T. Gause of the Harlan & Hollingsworth Company regarding the construction and testing of Stuart’s model for a railroad “self-acting station indicator.”

This series was assembled by historian Paul Preston Davis between 2001-2011. Most of the collection was acquired by Davis through purchase from Robert Fleck of Oak Knoll Books, New Castle, DE, in March of 1996. Fleck acquired many of the letters from Allen Shiek, a Delaware-based dentist, and past Director of the Archaeology Society of Delaware (1958-1960). As far as the provenance of the Stuart letters is concerned, it is unknown as to where Fleck acquired these from. Additional letters dated May 14, 1865, October 12, 1874, and April 10, 1883, were acquired by Davis from Wilmington artist, and former attorney, Charles Allmond. It is unknown as to where Allmond acquired these letters.

The research materials within this series were compiled by Davis and collector Julie Colflesh and include notes on Stuart’s work alongside photocopies of nineteenth- and twentieth-century newspaper articles that reference the artist. Other materials feature exhibitions of Stuart’s ship portraits and marine paintings, such as the 1956 exhibition, Stuart (1831-1898) held at John Wanamaker’s in Wilmington, Delaware and Alexander Charles Stuart: Ship Portraits and Marine Paintings, held at the Brandywine Museum of Art in 1997.

Davis’s interest in Alexander Charles Stuart has connection to his interest in Wilmington business and industry such as the Harlan & Holllingsworth Company.