Series IV - The Society for the Relief of Poor Widows with Children circa 1804-1881; the New York Methodist Sunday School Society 1835-1837; and the Tuberculosis Preventorium for Children 1910-1949, circa 1804-1949
Scope and Content
The series consists of three pages of original minutes from a February 11 1804 meeting of a subcommittee of the Society for the Relief of Poor Widows with Small Children (SRPW), with an additional document from April 1881 glued to it. The SRPW was Isabella Graham's earlier organization, out of which the Orphan Asylum Society (OAS) was founded in 1806 as a separate organization. The 1804 document refers to the decision of some SRPW volunteers to educate the children of the poor widows. The document was later framed in cardboard by an unknown person at the OAS, who presumably also wrote and attached the 1881 document as an introduction to the 1804 document. The deteriorating cardboard was removed at the New-York Historical Society in order to conserve the document. The New-York Historical Society also has among its collections eight volumes of board minutes (1797-1932) from the SRPW. The 3-page document in this series is not duplicated in the SRPW board minutes volumes.
The series also contains one volume of minutes of The New York Methodist Sunday School Society of the West Circuit from May 28, 1835 (the date of its founding) to October 25, 1837. The second half of the handwritten volume is a ledger recording receipts and cash expenses for a household, farm, and garden, created by an unknown person 1844-1851, and a detailed record of varieties of tulips and other flowers planted 1854-1855. It appears that the minutes book was repurposed as a ledger. The relationship of the creator of the first half of the volume to the creator of the second half of the volume is unknown. The reason this volume is in the Graham Windham collection is also unknown.
The series also contains one small box containing reports and correspondence from the Tuberculosis Preventorium for Children 1910-1921, and an annual report from that organization from 1949. The annual report also provides a summary of the organization from its founding in 1909 through 1948. The Tuberculosis Preventorium, located in Farmingdale New Jersey, merged into Windham Child Care in 1949.
These three group of records are arranged in chronological order.