After being carefully inspected by John R. Totten, a member of the NYG&B Society, it was declared in 1913 that the records of the female descendants of Elder William Brewster were the most “valuable manuscript donation our Society’s library has ever received.” [NYG&B Record, 44: 214]
The Female Descendants of Elder William Brewster comprises twenty-seven bound volumes and subvolumes of painstakingly handwritten notes compiled by Miss Emma C. Brewster Jones, who donated her work to the Society. Her systematic compilation details the female lines that had generally been omitted “for lack of time and space to devote to them,” according to The Record’s article. Along with the detailed descendant notes is information about how the family traveled through Holland before coming to America, as well as copies of deeds and some photographs. For a full description of what is in the collection, volume by volume, see the Record article “Notes on the Manuscript Records of the Female Descendants of Elder William Brewster."
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