Overview
Papers of American theologian, David Nelson Beach, Sr. (1848-1926).
Dates
- Creation: 1831-1870
Language of Materials
Collection materials are in English.
Conditions Governing Access
There are no restrictions on physical access to this material.
This collection is not housed at the Houghton Library but is shelved offsite at the Harvard Depository. Retrieval requires advance notice. Readers should check with Houghton Public Services staff to determine what material is offsite and retrieval policies and times.
Extent
12 linear feet (25 boxes)Compositions are primarily autograph manuscript sermons, but also includes texts of essays, speeches, lectures, articles, and other writings. Subject files include topics of the Anti-Saloon League, Yale University Class of 1872 reunion, Beach biographical miscellany, and many other topics. This series includes correspondence, clippings, pamphlets, leaflets, drafts of compositions, and other ephemera. Collection also includes printed materials collected by Beach, small amounts of personal and professional correspondence (by date), a few letters sent to his wife, Ellen Olive Walkley Beach, and four miscellaneous photographs.
Biographical / Historical
David Nelson Beach (1848-1926) was an American theologian, born at South Orange, New Jersey, the son of Joseph Wickliff Beach and Mary Angeline Walkley Beach. His brother was the missionary, Harlan Page Beach (1854-1933). David graduated from Yale College (AB 1872) and from Yale Divinity School in 1876. He became a Congregational minister with a parish at Westerly, Rhode Island. Later Beach had parishes at Wakefield and Cambridge, Massachusetts, and also in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Denver, Colorado. From 1903-1921 he was President and Professor of Sacred Rhetoric at the Bangor Theological Seminary in Bangor, Maine. He was active with the Anti-Saloon League and involved in temperance reform. He married Lilian Tappan Beach and they had children Dorothea, John, Joseph, and David Nelson Jr. before she died in 1902. In 1903 he married Dora Freeman Beach who died in 1915, and in 1916 he married Ellen Olive Walkley Beach. From 1921 to 1926 he was the pastor-at-large at Guilford and Southington, Connecticut. Beach died in Southington, Connecticut on October 18, 1926.
Beach's published writings include: Plain words on our Lord's work (1886); The newer religious thinking (1893); The intent of Jesus (1896); Statement of belief (1897); The Annie Laurie Mine (1903); and Meanings of the Battle of Bennington (1903).
Arrangement
Organized into the following series:
- I. David Nelson Beach compositions
- II. David Nelson Beach subject files
- III. Printed materials
- IV. Other materials
- V. David Nelson Beach correspondence
Physical Location
Harvard Depository
Immediate Source of Acquisition
No accession number. Gift of the Reverend David Nelson Beach family, 1943.
Separated Materials
Also held by Houghton Library: David Nelson Beach family correspondence (*94M-236). Collection is unprocessed and access requires permission of curator. The bulk of David Nelson Beach's correspondence can be found in this collection.
General note
This collection is shelved offsite at the Harvard Depository. See access restrictions below for additional information.
Processing Information
Processed by: Bonnie B. Salt
Part of the MS Storage project, 2008-2009.
- Title
- Beach, David Nelson, 1848-1926. David Nelson Beach papers, circa 1870-1831: Guide.
- Author
- Houghton Library, Harvard College Library
- Description rules
- dacs
- Language of description
- und
- EAD ID
- hou01996
Repository Details
Part of the Houghton Library Repository
Houghton Library is Harvard College's principal repository for rare books and manuscripts, archives, and more. Houghton Library's collections represent the scope of human experience from ancient Egypt to twenty-first century Cambridge. With strengths primarily in North American and European history, literature, and culture, collections range in media from printed books and handwritten manuscripts to maps, drawings and paintings, prints, posters, photographs, film and audio recordings, and digital media, as well as costumes, theater props, and a wide range of other objects. Houghton Library has historically focused on collecting the written record of European and Eurocentric North American culture, yet it holds a large and diverse number of primary sources valuable for research on the languages, culture and history of indigenous peoples of the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania.
Houghton Library’s Reading Room is free and open to all who wish to use the library’s collections.
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