Correspondence: October 20-24, 1944

The George Lawson Sheldon Collection features a variety of materials that Sheldon accumulated during his political career. Eight cubic feet of material makes up the collection. The collection has numerous copies of newspaper articles about Sheldon’s various political interests. Sheldon saved most of his political and party correspondence, and the collection houses the letters. Other letters and greeting cards constitute Sheldon’s correspondence with family and friends. A fair amount of this correspondence is between Sheldon and contacts from his home state, Nebraska, where he served as governor before moving to Mississippi. The collection contains Sheldon’s family bible and his poetry. Meeting minutes, party briefs, and resolutions make up most of Sheldon’s party materials in the collection. Sheldon’s political items include voting records for Mississippi Counties, advertising for local campaigns. Items related to presidential campaigns during Sheldon’s life include brochures advocating for and against candidates. Printed items come mostly from Sheldon’s political and party materials. The date range of the collection begins in 1928 and ends in 1961. The collection follows Sheldon’s political career from his post as Collector of Internal Revenue for Mississippi to his involvement within the Independent Republican Party. During Sheldon’s political career his most frequent correspondents are his aide Lamont Rowlands, E. M.C. Hawkins, and fellow member of the Independent Republican Party Charles Ulysses Gordon. Another important name in the collection is Perry Howard, the leader of the National Republican Party delegation in Mississippi. Sheldon and Howard engaged in a thirty-year dispute over which Republican party would represent Mississippi’s Republican delegation at the Republican National Convention. Because the material covers the entirety of the Great Depression from 1929 until it ended at the start of World War II, Sheldon has opinions on all of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s policies and elections.