This collection is open to research during scheduled appointments. Researchers must complete the Washington Library's Special
Collections and Archives Registration Form before access is provided. The library reserves the right to restrict access to
certain items for preservation purposes.
Preferred Citation
[Name and date of item], Research Notebooks of Elswyth Thane Beebe, Archives of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, Fred
W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington [hereafter Washington Library], Mount Vernon, Virginia
See the Chicago Manual of Style for additional examples.
Elswyth Thane Beebe (May 16, 1900 – July 31, 1984; nee Helen Ricker) was an American romance novelist, historian, and freelance,
screen, and newspaper writer. She was born in Burlington, Iowa, but move to New York in the 1920s. Her first novel, Riders
of the Wind, was published in 1926. And, although many of her works were quite popular, she became most well-known for her
historical fiction, including works about George and Martha Washington, Mount Vernon, and the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association.
This collection holds 34 volumes of notebooks kept by Elswyth Thane Beebe in preparation for two of her publications, "Mount
Vernon is ours; the story of its preservation," 1966 and "Mount Vernon; the legacy" 1967. These notebooks contain the notes
written by the author during her research on the history of Mount Vernon.
The notebooks are listed alphabetically by the subject of the notebook. These subject headings were assigned according to
the spines, notes, and the accession record. The subjects of seven notebooks did not seem to correspond with the accession
record. These were changed for this finding aid to more accurately reflect the correct subject and notes written in each notebook.
The original list from the accession record can be made available to researchers upon request.