| Description | Office copies of incoming correspondence with clerks' annotations giving date and name of correspondent, date of receipt, date on which the item came before committee, date answered and a number, in red ink, matching that on the document from which the copy was made. Each volume has a name index; items other than letters, such as reports, extracts, memoranda, petitions and medical certificates, are listed as separate entries in the alphabetical sequence.
Largely comprising copies of letters from missionary societies in Europe and North America and from places overseas where CMS had no mission work up to 1847. The third volume, dated 1847-1870, includes miscellaneous items of 'home' as well as 'foreign' correspondence [the change in scope of the volumes coincides with the start of Henry Venn's Secretaryship]. Correspondents include CMS missionaries recruited from European institutions, overseas bishops, a few British missionaries writing from England, former missionaries writing from overseas, the CMS President and others. |