DEPARTMENT OF HISTORICAL RESEARCH * 



J. Franklin Jameson, Director. 



The following report, the fifth annual report of the present Director, 

 covers the period from November i, 1909, to October 31, 1910. The regular 

 stafif of the Department has remained unchanged throughout the year, con- 

 sisting of the Director, Mr. Leland, Miss Davenport, and Dr. Burnett. In 

 addition, the Department has had, through most of the year, January to 

 October, the aid of Mr. David W. Parker, and at various times from March 

 to October that of Mr. Leo F. Stock. 



Almost from the beginning of the year reported upon, namely, from the 

 middle of November 1909, the Department has enjoyed the use of quarters 

 much more ample than those which it had hitherto occupied. The suite con- 

 sists of seven rooms in the Bond Building, a part of the suite formerly occu- 

 pied by the offices of administration of the Institution. Two of them are 

 dark rooms, available only for storage. The other five, however, are of 

 good quality and open conveniently from one to another. The largest room, 

 that formerly occupied by the President of the Institution and used for the 

 meetings of the Executive Committee, is now used as the office of the Direc- 

 tor and the place of deposit of the Department's library. Of the others, one 

 is specifically devoted to the records and other papers of the Department and 

 to the work of the secretary ; the rest are occupied by the various other mem- 

 bers of the stafif. The rooms are suitably furnished, but without eflFort at 

 anything beyond simplicity. They afiford sufficient space for our present 

 work, in which we were crowded in our former quarters ; but they are much 

 exposed to noise and dust, and are injuriously remote from the Library of 

 Congress; there is also a certain want of dignity, for a branch of an institu- 

 tion of learning, in the associations of an ordinary business building. 



From the latter part of June until the latter part of September the office 

 work of the Department was in the main carried on elsewhere than in Wash- 

 ington, part of the staff working at North Edgecomb, Maine, part of it in 

 Cambridge and Boston. 



For statements respecting the general plans of the Department and the 

 purposes which its operations are intended to subserve, the Director begs 

 leave to refer to former reports, and confines the present report to statements 

 respecting the progress of specific publications and other undertakings. The 

 publications of the Department, as has been explained in previous reports, 



* Address, 500 Bond Building, Washington, D. C. Grant No. 603. $22,700 for investi- 

 gations and maintenance during 1910. (For previous reports see Year Books Nos. 3-8.) 



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