Thorp, Raymond W.MareMagnum
TYPED LETTER SIGNED by the clergyman and president of Western Reserve University and Adelbert College CHARLES FRANKLIN THWING regretting that due to the University's financial commitments he can't act as sponsor for lectures by Ernest Thompson Seton.
1903réf. 100501Cleveland Ohio March 14 1903. 1903. Very good. - Over 230 words typed on his 11 inch high by 8-1/2 inch wide "President's Room / Western Reserve University / Adelbert College / Cleveland" stationery. The University's president Charles Franklin Thwing thanks the American impressario and lecture manager Major James P. Pond for the gift of an inscribed copy of Pond's lecture on Henry Ward Beecher. He goes on to explain that "I dare not undertake any financial responsibility regarding the coming of Ernest Thompson Seton to Cleveland." He explains that several academic lecturers "are coming to us in the next weeks." He hopes that Major Pond will be his guest the next time he is in Cleveland and that "I shall be very glad of course it is needless to say to arrange for you to lecture; and yet be it said even a man like you I hesitate to ask in a formal way for the reason that I find academic audiences are usually small for general lecturers however fascinating the subject however eminent the lecturer." Signed "Charles F. Thwing" with a couple of minor corrections in his hand. Pond has stamped that he has answered the letter at the very top. Folded for mailing with short tears to the edges of the horizontal fold and minor creases to the edges. Very good. The American clergyman and educator Charles Franklin Thwing 1853-1937 was president of Cleveland's Western Reserve University and Adelbert College. In that role he signed a petition for President William McKinley to mediate the Boer War conflict between Great Britain and the Transvall and the Orange Free States. Thwing was a member of the National Negro Committee a precursor of the NAACP and a supporter of the subsequently created NAACP. Cleveland, Ohio, March 14, 1903.
