Baldwin Room manuscripts: breathtaking and heartbreaking

I’ve spent several hours this week—and endless hours over the years—perusing items from the manuscript collection in the Toronto Reference Library’s Baldwin Room. This week, my explorations have been in preparation for a hands-on class I’m teaching there. Rather than chasing a specific fact, my aim has been for variety in subjects and time periods, and items with a story to reveal.

Oh, my. There are so many manuscripts with story to reveal.

Over 275 metres of letters, diaries, maps, plans, account books, wills, deeds, and other unpublished documents. From the terms of capitulation of the Town of York during the War of 1812, to John G. Howard’s wonderful architectural drawings, to the 1930 pledge of a young girl to “write in this diary every day”.

You must visit the Baldwin Room in person to use the manuscripts. But you also must be able to get to the Baldwin Room to find out if there’s an item that might be valuable to your research.*

The main access to the manuscript collection is through a traditional card catalogue. It is in two parts—one alphabetical by collection name, the second by subject. I’ve extracted the “A” manuscript names, below, as a sample. The tip of a 26-letter iceberg.

Some of the larger collections are described further in a set of paper finding aids, but again, only available on site in the Baldwin Room.

But, wait, there’s at least a taste of the collection in the 1954 Guide to the Manuscript Collection in the Toronto Public Libraries. It has been digitized and is available on the Toronto Public Library’s web site. Well worth a look, but remember that it won’t include acquisitions in the past 58 years!

* Only a very few items have been digitized on the Toronto Public Library’s web site—with the notable exception of a fine sampling of Toronto maps recently made available.