DEPARTMENT OF HISTORICAL RESEARCH. 181 



Congress in September 1774 to July 4, 1776; the second volume to the 

 end of 1777; the third to June 30, 1779. 



Until February, Mr. Stock was able to do little else than to perform 

 the duties which fell to him as assistant secretary of the National Board 

 for Historical Service, and even since that date those duties have con- 

 sumed in each month a part of his time; but in the last nine months 

 of the year reported upon he has been able to devote himself mainly to 

 his regular work of editing the ''Proceedings and Debates of ParHa- 

 ment respecting North America." The work of gathering together 

 the materials having been substantially completed long ago, his 

 present work is mainly that of annotating the texts. This has now 

 been carried into the period of the Long Parhament and to the end of 

 1640. Miss Galbraith has finished the decipherment and transcrip- 

 tion, from photographs procured from the British Museum, of the 

 American passages in Henry Cavendish's shorthand notes of debates 

 in the ''Unreported Parliament" of 1768-1774. 



Miss Donnan returned in February from her temporary service 

 as a substitute teacher in Mount Holyoke College, and from that time 

 until her permanent transfer to that institution in September was 

 occupied with her collection of documents and narratives illustrating 

 the history of the African slave-trade and of the importation of slaves 

 into English America. For some two months she was in South Caro- 

 lina, occupied chiefly in the examination of the papers of Henry 

 Laurens, a collection rich in materials for the history of slave importa- 

 tions into South Carolina, to which she was given the fullest access 

 by the South Carolina Historical Society, the present owners of the 

 collection. Other researches in Charleston, in Columbia, and in 

 Richmond were also carried out. It is believed that the search for 

 unprinted material in the United States has been nearly completed. 

 Much of that material has already been copied. There will be no 

 hesitation in including also considerable amounts of material from 

 books already printed, since many narratives and descriptions having 

 much importance to the subject are contained in old books of the eight- 

 eenth century, found in few American libraries or written in languages 

 with which few American historical students are famihar. Most of 

 the book has, however, been taken from manuscript sources, and this 

 proportion will be much increased by the searches yet to be made in 

 London archives and in the British Museum. That part of the material 

 which has been taken from American colonial newspapers, such as 

 the unique file of the South Carolina Gazette, is, on account of the rarity 

 of these papers, regarded in the same hght as manuscript. The 

 collection, viewed in its present state of advancement, bids fair to be 

 one of great interest and historical value. 



Mrs. Catterall has been able to devote a part of her time to the 

 compilation described on page 144 of the last annual report, the ex- 



