Guide to the Walden Family Papers

The Walden Family Papers, 1824-1969, bulk 1824-1920s, document the life and ministerial career of J.W. Walden, as well as the Walden family. The papers also contain material created by, relating to, or documenting Mrs. J.W. (Mary Olmsted Murrell) Walden's side of the family, including the Olmsted/Olmstead, Field, and Stockton families of New Jersey. The collection consists primarily of clippings, ephemera, scrapbooks, sermons, poetry, writings, diaries, correspondence, and photographs.

The collection includes three folders of J.W. Walden's handwritten sermons, 1875-1888 and undated, and a folder of his sermon notes and outlines, 1895 and undated. Many of the sermons indicate where and when they were delivered. A single folder contains poems and other writings authored by Walden. Two scrapbooks of J.W. Walden and family material include additional unpublished and published poems and writings.

Folder 6 in Box 1 and the two J.W. Walden and family scrapbooks also contain clippings, ephemera, correspondence, resolutions, and obituaries primarily concerning J.W. Walden's ministerial career, as well as his life and death and that of his wife, Mary Olmsted Murrell Walden, and daughter, Caroline (Carrie) Stockton Walden. Additionally, there are letters of condolence on the death of J.W. Walden in 1916, as well as a memorial and tribute to his daughter, Mary (May) Olmsted Walden Morton, on her death in 1963. A folder of photographs includes portraits of J.W. Walden, Mrs. J.W. (Mary Olmsted Murrell) Walden, and the J.W. Walden family. There are scrapbooks of Mrs. J.W. (Mary Olmsted Murrell) Walden and Caroline (Carrie) Stockton Walden, and Amy Patton Walden Harrell's personal copy of the 1901 Presbyterian Church in the U.S. hymnbook (The New Psalms and Hymns) out of which Hymn 32 was read at her funeral in 1969. 

Other J.W. Walden family papers include two photographs of J.W. Walden's brother, Charles Robert Walden (CSA), in military uniform and an undated typescript copy of his 1863-1864 Civil War diary; three letters of 1841 and 1843 from Patton family members to J.W. Walden's mother, Emily Eliza Patton, prior to her marriage to his father on October 1, 1844; a November 1844 letter to Mrs. Emily E. Walden from her mother; an 1845 letter to Emily and her husband George S. Walden from her father; and Emily Eliza Patton's 1842 essay, "Home".

The collection also contains papers of Mrs. J.W. (Mary Olmsted Murrell) Walden's side of the family. Her father's (William J. Murrell) papers include a scrapbook, his 1854 Princeton senior composition ("Life's History"), an 1882 letter to his daughter, and memorial material on his death in 1890. An 1851 inscribed and annotated Bible belonged to Mary Olmsted (Mrs. William J. Murrell) and then her daughter, Mary Olmsted Murrell (Mrs. J.W. Walden). Carrie S. Olmsted's 1860 diary documents a year in the life of a young woman in Princeton, New Jersey. There are three undated letters from H.B. Field (possibly Hannah Stockton Field Olmsted, 1806-1880), Princeton, New Jersey, to Mary Hunter (possibly Mary Hunter Stockton Hodge, d. 1880, the second wife of Presbyterian theologian Charles Hodge), Bordentown, New Jersey. H.B. Field's scrapbook, 1824-1839, 1850-1906 and undated, includes information about the Field, Stockton, and Olmsted/Olmstead families.