Conditions Governing Access

This collection is open to research during scheduled appointments. Researchers must complete the Washington Library's Special Collections and Archives Registration Form before access is provided. The library reserves the right to restrict access to certain items for preservation purposes.

Preferred Citation

[Name and date of item], Research Notebooks of Elswyth Thane Beebe, Archives of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington [hereafter Washington Library], Mount Vernon, Virginia

See the Chicago Manual of Style for additional examples.

Biographical / Historical

Elswyth Thane Beebe (May 16, 1900 – July 31, 1984; nee Helen Ricker) was an American romance novelist, historian, and freelance, screen, and newspaper writer. She was born in Burlington, Iowa, but move to New York in the 1920s. Her first novel, Riders of the Wind, was published in 1926. And, although many of her works were quite popular, she became most well-known for her historical fiction, including works about George and Martha Washington, Mount Vernon, and the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association.

Scope and Contents

This collection holds 34 volumes of notebooks kept by Elswyth Thane Beebe in preparation for two of her publications, "Mount Vernon is ours; the story of its preservation," 1966 and "Mount Vernon; the legacy" 1967. These notebooks contain the notes written by the author during her research on the history of Mount Vernon.

Arrangement

The notebooks are listed alphabetically by the subject of the notebook. These subject headings were assigned according to the spines, notes, and the accession record. The subjects of seven notebooks did not seem to correspond with the accession record. These were changed for this finding aid to more accurately reflect the correct subject and notes written in each notebook. The original list from the accession record can be made available to researchers upon request.

Related Material

Elswyth Thane publications Elswyth Thane Beebe Collection of Washington Family Papers