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English family living at Nynehead Court, Somerset, England. Individual family members include William (d. 1833), Edward (1794-1871), William A. (1818-1902) and Edward C. A. Sanford (1859-1923).
Manuscript volumes describing the property, in particular a large library collection, accounts and activities of the Sanford family.
This collection is organized into five series:
Please use the following format when citing materials from this collection:
Sanford family Papers, Mount Holyoke College, Archives and Special Collections, South Hadley, Massachusetts
Arranged chronologically.
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The account books recording day-to-day expenditures at both a city and country property held by the Sanford family. Among the subjects are amounts spent on food, for care of the horses, grounds maintenance, travel costs (including turnpike tolls), postage, housekeeping supplies and laborer's wages.
Arranged by subject.
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Inventory of the contents of Nynehead Court, arranged by type of material (paintings, silverplate, etc.), with notes on where each item was located. Some items indicate whether the item was a gift or a purchase.
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The journal entries date from Feb. 1840 to May 1841, the whole in a ready-bound volume entitled "The literary diary; or, improved common-place-book: on the plan recommended by Mr. Locke. To which are prefixed, An explanatory treatise; and an Abridgement of the Aurifodina of Drexelius, by Bishop Horne". Two pages have been provided for an index, but these have not been used. The first entry suggests that this volume was not only for W. A. Sanford's personal use, but that much of the same information was also recorded in the account books of the estate (as cross-indexed in the margins). An additional 20 leaves of undated entries follow the dated entries, including one which indicates that entries were made as late as 1871. At least two of these later entries concern sightings of ghosts.
Numbered
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Undated volume containing 340 riddles or "charades", ranging from very short riddles such as "I am ever, and yet am never" to complicated rhymes of 12 lines and more. A separate section at the back, written upside-down, provides the answers to fewer than 10% of the riddles. The compiler of the volume is unknown, though it may have been made by or for Mary Sanford Lynton, whose name appears as an acrostic on the page with the "Answer to nos. 274, 275, 276, 277."
Arranged by subject.
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The catalogues document the library of the Sanford family at Nynehead Court in Somerset England sometime in the 19th century prior to 1892. Most volumes in W. A. Sanford's hand, some titles have E. C. A. Sanford's initials against them. Vol. 44, Catalogue of Latin authors, has a note suggesting that it was compiled as part of the inventory of the estate of one of the Sanfords. The volumes are bound in one-quarter leather with red marbled paper, the pages are ruled.