The Dorr Letters Project is a digital collection and scholarly project devoted to the correspondence of Thomas Wilson Dorr. The goal of the project is to further the exploration of Rhode Island history through the combination of traditional scholarly editing with current digital technologies such as text encoding (TEI).
At present the project includes two collections of about thirty letters each. The first collection, The Road To Rebellion, contains digital transcriptions of thirty letters from the Dorr Correspondence files in the Sidney S. Rider Collection at the John Hay Library (Brown University), the James Fowler Simmons Papers at the Library of Congress, the Gilder Lehrman Institute, and one letter from the private collection of Richard Slaney. These letters illustrate aspects of race, reform, antislavery and proslavery politics, and, of course, the Dorr Rebellion. There are more than 2500 letters that are known to exist that either pertain to the Dorr Rebellion and its aftermath or the early life of the rebellion's leader Thomas Wilson Dorr. In order to keep the number of letters selected for this project to a manageable number the editors focused on Dorr's early life (Philips Exeter Academy and Harvard University), his early law career, his political career in the mid-1830s, and his emergence as the leader of the reform movement that sought to revise Rhode Island's archaic governing structure.
The second collection, The Road Not Taken, provides educators and students with a unique opportunity to examine the views of those who opposed Providence attorney Thomas Wilson Dorr's attempt to reform the state's archaic governing structure in the spring of 1842. Henry Brown, the author of an insightful history of Pawtuxet Village and one of Rhode Island's leading collectors, has generously made a significant portion of his collection of papers relating to his ancestor John Brown Francis available at the Rhode Island Historical Society Library. Though the material on this website constitutes only a small fraction of what is on deposit at the RIHS, the letters make clear that there were alternative possibilities which politicians might have taken in 1841-1842.
The third collection, Thomas Wilson Dorr's Prison Correspondence, provides educators and students with a unique opportunity to examine a previously neglected set of letters between Dorr and his mother Lydia Dorr while he was imprisoned in Providence following his conviction for treason against the state of Rhode Island. The letters are all part of the Thomas Wilson Dorr collection at the John Hay Library at Brown University. The letters help to illustrate Dorr's relationship with his mother Lydia and his father Sullivan, along with his siblings. The politics surrounding Dorr's imprisonment, most notably how his trial and conviction were used by northern Democrats in the presidential election of 1844 are also part of the story. Finally, students will get a sense of the activism of Rhode Island women who worked tirelessly for Dorr's release from prison.
The fourth collection, Dorrite Women, provides educators with a unique glimpse into the lives of Rhode Island women connected to the cause of suffrage reform. Students will learn about the activism of women who openly aligned themselves with the Democratic Party and worked tirelessly to aid Thomas Dorr in his efforts to overturn Rhode Island’s archaic governing structure. Educators will want to pair the stories contained in these letters with lessons on women’s history, especially the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention.
The selection of letters was governed by the notion of what would work best in the high school and college classroom. Each letter is accompanied by an introduction, and a set of questions. This content may be of specific interested to educators who wish to include Dorr-related content in their curriculum. For further resources that may be of use in the classroom setting, please see the Dorr Rebellion Project page where you will find a short-form documentary on the Rebellion, along with lesson plans, and further resources.
The project was funded in part by grants from the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities, the Rhode Island Foundation, and Heritage Harbor Foundation.
Please send questions, bug reports, and/or general feedback to dps@providence.edu