Scottish Collection
Visit the largest Scottish archival collection outside of the UK.
The library at the University of Guelph contains one of the largest collections of Scottish material outside of the United Kingdom, including both printed materials on Scottish and Scottish-Canadian topics and a large amount of manuscript source material in the form of letters and business documents.
Books, journals, pamphlets, government documents, maps, broadsides, microforms and newspapers make up a large portion of the collection. Manuscripts date back to 1400. Although the collection contains Scottish-Canadian material, there is also information from other Scottish settlements around the world.
The collection is particularly strong in the areas of the covenanting period, the Darien Disaster and the Treaty of Union, the Jacobites, the Presbyterian Church schisms of the late18th and 19th centuries, Scottish topography, genealogy and family history, Scottish chapbooks and ballad literature, Scottish poetry and prose of the 19th and 20th centuries, Scottish agriculture, and social and economic history.
The manuscript collections are rich in Scottish and Scottish-Canadian materials. The largest is the 12,000 item Ewan-Grahame collection, covering more than 150 years of Aberdeenshire history in the 18th and 19th century. Others include the Campbell of Menzies Papers and the Pultney Papers. The collection also includes material on emigration to Canada, particularly to Ontario, with a large component of family correspondence. Collections of family papers include the Mickle papers, the Allan-Higinbotham papers, the Connon collection, the Jardine collection, the Henry Wissler papers, the John MacIntosh Duff collection, the Marston-Archibald collection, the Watt-Argo collection, the Gilkison-Fraser papers, the Fasken family collection and large segments of the Goodwin-Haines collection. The archives hold the L. M. Montgomery collection, which includes the author’s diaries. The Foulis collection contains between 60 and 70 percent of the total output of the world-famous Glasgow publishing house.
Collections include:
- James Dinwhittie collection: correspondence of an enlightenment scientist
- Ewan Grahame collection of correspondence amounting to some 12,000 letters (1750-1840)
- Scottish chapbooks
- Scottish tourism
- Covenanting, Jacobite and Disruption pamphlets
- Campbell of Monzie papers dating from the mid-14th century
- Letters of the Campbells of Kildonan
- Collection of first editions from the Foulis press
- Nineteenth- and twentieth-century novels
- Collections from families in the Guelph area
The collection is particularly strong in local histories and genealogical materials. Access to the collection is open to the public, please visit the