Through a recent anonymous donation, Clayton Library has acquired The Rosemond E. and Emile Kuntz Collection: A Catalogue of the Manuscripts and Printed Ephemera.* The Catalogue is an excellent guide, calendar, and comprehensive name and subject index to the Kuntz manuscript collection, part of Special Collections of Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University, New Orleans. The collection holds more than 3,500 manuscripts collected over an 80-year period. The bulk of this material covers the French and Spanish colonial period through Reconstruction in Louisiana (especially New Orleans), Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas. The major focus is on Louisiana history, society, and culture.

Examples of the collection are numerous marriage contracts and wills as well as original copies (extraits) of sacramental acts concerning the genealogy of several early Louisiana families. There is also a large amount of correspondence. To obtain copies of documents found in the Catalogue, researchers should send requests to Special Collections; Jones Hall, Room 202; Tulane University; New Orleans, LA 70118-5682. Photocopies are 75¢ per page (February 2000). Some of the documents in the collection are too fragile to copy.

When writing for copies, it is important to give the classification period and then to cite fully the item as given in the Catalogue, i.e., the document date and title, and the number of pages. The classification periods are the categories in the Catalogue’s table of contents. An example of a cite would be the recipient’s copy of the marriage of Captain Henri d’Orgon and Magdelaine Duvergés (the original not being extant at St. Louis Cathedral) as follows: “French colonial period, 1753, April 26, Marriage Certificate of Chevalier Henry D’Orgon and Marie Magdelaine Duvergés, 2 pages.”

* Guillermo Falcón, ed. (New Orleans: Howard-Tilton Memorial Library of Tulane University, 1981). This book was given to Clayton Library in memory of Isabelle Lafonta Ewing, a friend of Felix Kuntz. Mr. Kuntz began donating portions of the collection to Howard-Tilton Memorial Library in 1954.