These papers document members of the Brannan, Doddridge, and Hemenway families. Elizabeth (Hammond) Gorham (1822-1910) was born in Boston, the daughter of Daniel and Sally (Stoddard) Hammond. She married Francis Gorham in 1845 and lived in Boston and Cambridge, where her only child, Julia Gardiner Gorham (1848-1925), attended Berkeley Street School.
In 1875 JGG married Joseph Doddridge Brannan (called Dodd; 1848-1930; AB Harvard 1869, LLD 1872) of Cincinnati, Ohio. Except for summer 1883 to summer 1885, when she lived in Europe with JGB and the Brannan children, EHG lived with the Brannans in Cincinnati from the time of their marriage until 1898, when JDB returned to Harvard as Bussey Professor of Law. The family thereafter lived at 3 Berkeley street in Cambridge. The Brannans had two children: Frank Doddridge (1876-1955; AB Harvard 1899), and Elizabeth ("Elsa," 1882-1970), who attended Berkeley Street School, studied music, participated in the Vincent Club (Boston), in 1912 married Courtenay Hemenway, a teacher at Choate School in Wallingford, Conn., and later gave piano recitals.
EHG built Rockledge, the house in Biddeford Pool, in 1885; the family had stayed in hotels and boarding houses there beginning in 1873 or earlier. Much of the correspondence in this collection is between family members there and those elsewhere.
From the guide to the Collection, 1795-1957, (Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute)
