Charles Lyon Chandler (b. 1883) was a United States foreign service officer, Philadelphia banker, history professor, and author. The collection contains the papers of Chandler, consisting mainly of material related to his unpublished biography of Joel Robert Poinsett (1779-1851) of South Carolina, diplomat, United States representative, United States Secretary of War, and anti-nullificationist. Included are notes and documents used in its preparation in the 1930s; Chandler's correspondence with Miss Emma A. Bull, researcher in Charleston, S.C., Professor Edwin Judson Pratt, author of the chapters on Poinsett's activities as first United States minister in Mexico, 1825-1830, and other scholars and related correspondents, 1918-1961; and twenty-six collected manuscript letters to and from Poinsett and extensive copies of Poinsett papers, 1803-1852, located elsewhere. Also included are letters and correspondence of Chandler while he worked abroad for the United States State Department in Europe, Asia, and South America, 1906-1913, and in Latin American again in the 1940s; speeches and articles; diaries, 1904-1911; thirty-nine pocket memorandum books; and three scrapbooks on Latin American topics, 1909-1919 and 1943-1944, especially concerned with commerce between the United States and Brazil during the 19th century.
