Series I: Correspondence (1871-1918)

The series consists mainly of official correspondence received, including orders to report to ships, permissions for leave, administration of the Torpedo Board, service on various courts martial, and assignments to lecture at the Naval War College. The letters sent are mostly typescript carbons with some letterpress copies, and include official reports filed on operations and cruises, providing details of the responsibilities of a ship's commander in this period. John Meigs's January 1909 letters discuss the formation of a naval historical society and in that year John Sanford Barnes sends draft bylaws of the Naval Historical Society, comparing it to Britain's Naval Records Society. The last document was found in the original Correspondence box and is not in Goodrich's handwriting; it may have been written by New-York Historical Society librarian Dorothy Barck.