The Papers of Carlisle V. Hibbard include documents dated as early as 1811, Civil War letters of a Union soldier who was kin, and correspondence of the family between 1902 and 1954. At least half of the Hibbard papers are composed of personal letters on small family matters of little value except insofar as they reveal the type of family they were. However, the papers are a good chronicle of the careers within a family devoted to public service and Christian leadership.
The album of photographs relates to experiences of Carlisle Hibbard in Manchuria and Korea, and includes group portraits and images of camp life and activities, 1904-1905.
The correspondence of the C. V. Hibbard family while they lived in the Orient (1902-1914) gives much descriptive material on customs, living conditions, and Japanese culture. Most of this is found in personal letters, as there are few letters directly related to “Y” work. At Mr. Hibbard's direction, the family was careful not to write in any manner that could be misconstrued by Japan in case published excerpts from such letters ever found their way back to that country.
Letters from Hibbard to his family (then living in New York state) during the years when he was in Europe give some insight into conditions there at the time. This is particularly true of his comments on Russia in 1922.
From this collection it is not possible to glean very much information on the Y.M.C.A. at the University of Wisconsin during C. V. Hibbard's 16 years there. However, throughout his correspondence after 1910 he frequently mentions problems and incidents connected with raising funds for the Y.M.C.A.
Hibbard's office correspondence in connection with the National Student Relocation Council during World War II gives much information on the work of that council. When Japanese American students were taken from colleges and universities and interned in camps, this council undertook to help them get back into institutions of learning. This was an official agency of the War Relocation Authority.
C. V. Hibbard had two brothers; Darrell is occasionally referred to in the letters, and was engaged in Y.M.C.A. work also. During World War II he was located in New York in connection with Greek relief. Addison taught in Japanese and American universities and became Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Northwestern University. Although there are several letters from Addison to their father, D. O. Hibbard, in the summer of 1921, his other letters are few.
Esther Hibbard's letters from Japan are largely concerned with small matters, and yet they provide interesting commentary on Japanese life as seen by a well-informed and sympathetic foreign observer. The comments on political events are fairly limited in scope, but there is a little material on the Manchurian invasion, made more interesting by the fact that both Miss Hibbard and her father had some personal acquaintance with that area. There is also some material, in the years from 1936 to 1941, on the Japanese war effort insofar as she was able to observe it. One comment in the letters, that people were a little careful about discussing political subjects before her, indicates that she was not in a position to be able to acquire too much information by hearsay; most of her comments are based on watching what went on. The post-1946 material contains a small amount of comment on the military government, and more on conditions in post-war Japan.
The earliest of the C.V. Hibbard papers are documents dating from 1811 to 1856. Although most of these are deeds and mortgages involving transfer of land in the Benjamin Fowle family of New York state, two concern mortgages to which Charles Hanford was a party. Hanford was an uncle of Daniel Densmore, the author of Civil War letters in this collection.
Letters pre-dating the C. V. Hibbard family are worth noting only because they include fifteen from Daniel Densmore, a Union soldier. He briefly describes Indian skirmishes in Minnesota in the fall of 1863; preparations for the Sanitary Fair in St. Louis in the spring of 1864; and conditions in the lower Mississippi region in 1864. His description of the Sanitary Fair includes drawings of locations and buildings in the letter of April 19, 1864.
The connection between Densmore and the C. V. Hibbard family is vague, but it is quite probable that the relationship was through Mrs. Hibbard's family. Densmore wrote to Mrs. Russel Cheney and Libbie in 1864, calling them “Aunt Susan” and “Cousin Libbie”; and in 1881 he sent a telegram to Russel Cheney in care of Eugene Lowell. Grandpa Cheney wrote Libbie Lowell in 1883 that “Susie is a dear little girl.” This may have referred to Mrs. C. V. Hibbard, whose maiden name was Sue Eugenia Lowell, and who was called “Susie.”
