The John Jay Papers: Re-envisioning a 20th-Century Editorial Project for a 21st-Century Audience

John Jay\u27s papers have had a far more tortured history than they deserve-and more than seemed their destiny at his death in 1829. Then it seemed likely that his career and contributions would be studied as carefully and enthusiastically as any other Founding Father\u27s-certainly as closely as his friends John Adams and Alexander Hamilton. His family\u27s archive had survived the Revolution in war-torn Westchester County and New York City. His personal papers had successfully crossed the Atlantic when he returned from diplomatic missions abroad in 1784 and 1795. Jay\u27s will placed those papers in the custody of his devoted family, and his younger son, William, published a creditable two volume life and letters of his father in the 1830s. As the years passed, Jay\u27s documentary record still seemed to be blessed. His descendants, unlike those of Madison and Jefferson, did not fall on hard times, and there were no emergency sales of historical manuscripts for cash