Collection consists of Newton's Civil War diary, letters received from family and friends in the Framingham, Mass. area, juvenilia, 45th Mass. Regiment reunion publications, and other material. Diary covers the period 1862 Aug. 27-1863 March 17. Newton notes when he enlisted in the nine months regiment, being sent to camp in Readville, taking cars to Boston and then onto a ship for North Carolina, the battles of Kinston and Whitehall, picket and guard duty, deaths in the regiment, rebel attacks, battalion drills, the weather, etc. Letters date from 1863 March 18 to May 23, and are from his mother, Abigail Goddard Newton, sister Mary B., brother Lorenzo, cousins Helen G. Barnard and Charles G[oddard?], and friend Emery Smith. Letters are in response to Nathan's and inquire about life as a soldier in Company F., discuss family and mutual acquaintances in the Framingham area, school, etc. Juvenilia consists of Newton's school compositions, 1861-1862, including an essay describing a family visit to Rocky Point, R.I. (plus one composition of Lorenzo Newton's), school commendations for Mary B. and Nathan G. Newton, 1854, and a group of autographs of the Framingham High School class of 1862. With two printed broadsides: Forty-Fifth Mass. Association, "Proceedings at the Reunion of 1885" held at Swampscott, Mass.; and a poem by Albert W. Mann ("Historian of the Forty-fifth Regiment, M.V.M."), "Just Fifty Years Ago." With a carte de visite photograph of Newton in uniform, a sketch of an engagement with Confederate forces, and a pocket Bible, The New Testament of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ... (New York: American Bible Society, 1851).
