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Item
Number: DM4100
The Letter:
Stampless cover from Louis Dwight to Peter D. Vroom, dated 1847. The cover is
postmarked from Boston … In the letter, Dwight asks Vroom for a few words of
support about the efficacy of the Prison Discipline Society, which Dwight
founded and headed.
Size: 15
1/2" wide x 10" high, folded to 7 3/4" wide x 10" high and written on the first
page only. In near-fine condition with only a few small separations at folds.
Background Information:
The writer of the letter, Louis Dwight (1793 – 1854) was born in Stockbridge,
Berkshire County, Massachusetts in 1793. He was the son of Henry Williams Dwight
and Abigail Welles. He attended Yale College and later, Andover Theological
Seminary. He married Louisa Willis and was the father of a son.
Throughout his life, Dwight was involved in a number of progressive social
movements. He was an abolitionist, annually delivering a series of sermons on
the subject. He also spent time delivering Bibles to prison inmates as a
representative of the American Bible Society. The conditions he observed caused
him to become involved in the prison reform movement, advocating for the
widespread adoption of the New York “Auburn” system, which involved group – not
solitary – labor, and cell blocks, rather than solitary confinement.
In May 1825, Dwight founded the Boston Prison Discipline Society. He served as
secretary for the society from its founding until his death in 1854. The purpose
of the Prison Discipline Society (1826-1854) was the improvement of public
prisons. Members of the Prison Discipline Society (PDS) collected facts and
statistics on prisons through correspondence and annual visits to various
prisons. Dwight’s advocacy with public officials resulted in a number of
significant improvements to prisons throughout the US and brought about the
construction of houses of refuge, reform schools and state asylums for the
mentally ill around the Northeast.
The letter’s recipient, Peter Dumont Vroom (1791 – 1873) was born in Somerset
County New Jersey to Col. Peter Dumont Vroom and his wife Elsie Bogert in 1791.
Vroom attended Somerville Academy, graduated from Columbia College in New York,
and was admitted to the bar in 1813. He married Ann V.D. Dumont in 1817.
Active in politics, he was elected to the General Assembly from Somerset County
in 1826. He was elected governor of New Jersey in 1828, reelected in the next
two years, and then again in 1833. As governor, he advocated for prison reform,
constructed a new penitentiary and abolished imprisonment for debt.
After his terms as governor, Vroom remained active in politics and government.
In 1837, President Martin Van Buren appointed him Claims Commissioner to the
Chickasaw tribe in Mississippi to adjudicate land claims. In 1838, he was
elected to the House of Representatives. A widower by 1840, he married Maria M.
Wall in that year. President Franklin Pierce appointed him as minister to the
Court of Prussia in 1854. After a long and active public life, he died in
Trenton New Jersey on November 18, 1873.
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HISTORY
BY HAND