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HOLLIS 9899163

Hiss, Alger. Prison Correspondence, 1951-1954: Finding Aid

Harvard Law School Library, Cambridge, MA 02138

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Harvard Law School
March 2006

© 2006 The President and Fellows of Harvard College

Descriptive Summary

Repository: Harvard Law School Library, Harvard University
Location: Harvard Depository
Call No.: HOLLIS 9899163
Creator: Hiss, Alger
Title: Prison Correspondence, 1951-1954
Quantity: 12 boxes
Abstract: Letters from Alger Hiss to his family written during his 1951-1954 prison sentence, and letters written to Hiss from his family and others.

Processing Information:

Processed by Rebecca Fenning, March 2006

Acquisition Information:

Gift of Tony Hiss, November 2004.

Access Restrictions:

Access to these papers is governed by the rules and regulations of the Harvard Law School Library. This collection is open to the public, but is housed off-site at Harvard Depository and requires 2 business-day advance notice for retrieval. Consult the Special Collections staff for further information.

Use Restrictions:

The Harvard Law School Library holds copyright on some, but not all, of the material in our collections. Requests for permission to publish material from this collection should be directed to the Special Collections staff. Researchers who obtain permission to publish from the Harvard Law School Library are also responsible for identifying and contacting the persons or organizations who hold copyright.

Scope and Content

This collection consists of correspondence written to and from Alger Hiss during his 1951-1954 prison sentence for perjury. Nearly all the correspondence was written while Hiss was in Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary in Pennsylvania, though a few of the earliest letters in the collection are dated from Federal Detention Headquarters, New York City. Correspondents include members of Hiss's family: primarily his wife, Priscilla, and son, Anthony, but also his stepson, Timothy Hobson, brother, Donald Hiss, and brother-in-law, Tom Fansler. Many of the letters from Tony Hiss include drawings in pencil or crayon and some are formatted as a mock-newspaper, which Tony titled "The Family Eagle."
Other correspondents include Reverend Duane Wevill, Chester T. Lane, Sally Flanders, Robert J. Benjamin, John E. Magers, John Balfe, and Ken McCormick.

Series List


Within each series and/or subseries individual items or folders are identified by box and folder number. For example, the number 5-12 corresponds to box 5, folder 12.

Historical/Biographical Information


Alger Hiss was born in Baltimore in 1904, and graduated from Harvard Law School in 1929, where he was a protege of Felix Frankfurter. He worked in several departments of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal administration before joining the Department of State in 1936. He accompanied Roosevelt to the conference at Yalta and served as the Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on International Organization in San Francisco in 1945. Hiss left the State Department in 1946 to become president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (where he served until 1949).
In 1948, Whittaker Chambers appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee and alleged that both he and Hiss had been members of the Communist party during the 1930s and that they had both served as spies for the Soviet Union. Though Hiss denied the charges, he became a part of a complicated series of legal battles and was eventually convicted on two counts of perjury. Hiss served a sentence of 44 months, from March 1951 to November 1954, in Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary in Pennsylvania. Until his death in 1996, Alger Hiss maintained his innocence and worked to clear his name.

Additional Index Terms

The following catalog entries represent persons, organizations, and topics documented in this collection. An entry for each appears in the Harvard On Line Library Information System (HOLLIS) and other automated bibliographic databases. THIS IS NOT AN INDEX.
Balfe, John
Benjamin, Robert J.
Children's drawings
Fansler, Thomas
Flanders, Sally
Hiss, Alger--Correspondence
Hiss, Donald
Hiss, Priscilla
Hiss, Tony
Hobson, Timothy
Lane, Chester T.
Magers, John E.
McCormick, Kenneth
Prisoners' families
Prisoners' writings, American
Subversive activities--United States--History--20th century
Wevill, Duane

CONTAINER LIST


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