Content:
This manuscript consists of notes about Whitman's family history. The various dates referenced suggest that the earliest portions of it were written sometime after 1845, and most of the notes seem to have been written at various stages between 1845 and 1855. Edward Grier dates the recto to 1850, and speculates that the earliest date for the writing on the verso is likely March 1853, when the two Cumberland Street houses were sold (
Notebooks and Prose Manuscripts
[New York: New York University Press, 1984], 1:8). For footnotes relating the names listed here to Whitman, see Grier. Whitman made additions to the manuscript several times, adding to it for the last time sometime around 1861. One of the names referenced on the verso, "Covert," appears in Whitman's short story "
Revenge and Requital
" (1845) and his novel
Life and Adventures of Jack Engle
(1852). The name is also mentioned in an early notebook draft of the plot of
Jack Engle
(see "
a schoolmaster
").
