DMDE News

Enhancements and New Content

29 June 2009

The third installment of DMDE is published, adding over two hundred documents mainly from 1836 and later, most of them connected with Dolley Madison’s complex and burdensome task of settling her late husband’s will. In addition to personal correspondence, the new installment includes many legal documents connected to the settlement and reprinted articles from newspapers and periodicals concerning James Madison’s papers and estate.

Letters added to the third installment

18 July 2007

• A new printable version link has been added to documents, making it easy to view a print-ready version of letters. (Previously, the print-ready version was viewable only by using the “print preview” feature of one’s Web browser.)
• Fleeing the British: Where Dolley Madison took refuge on the night of August 23, 1814 – new blog entry by Holly Shulman

11 July 2007

The second installment of DMDE is published, adding nearly two hundred documents written after James Madison’s death on June 28, 1836, and extending the chronology of the DMDE through early April 1837. In addition, forty-five pre-widowhood letters have been added to those originally published in the first installment of DMDE. Complete lists:

• Letters added to the first installment, 1788–June 1836
• Second installment letters, 29 June 1836–4 April 1837

The following new features and improvements accompany the second installment:

• This “What’s New” section, which will continue to be updated regularly
• A new biographical introduction, Widowhood: The First Ten Months
• Detailed editorial notes have been added covering topics of relevance to multiple letters; they are linked from the sidebar in associated documents
• Searching and display of results have been reorganized and improved. Phrase searching is now supported, and search terms are highlighted in results. The person search uses an Ajax-driven entry field to speed searches when the start of a name is known.
• An entirely new Place Browser has been added, taking advantage of hierarchical tagging of place data to allow the reader to navigate through a “tree” of all place names referred to in the letters

8 June 2007

Minor corrections and identifications added to about 100 letters from the first series (1788–June 1836).

Dolley Madison Scholarship

2 July 2007

“Hawks among the Pigeons: Slave picking at Montpelier”: new blog essay by DMDE editor Holly Shulman.