Timothy Green and William Elijah Green composed 56 essays, orations, dialogues, and other prose works while attending the College of Rhode Island (now Brown University) in the late 18th century. Their work concerns politics, history, morality and ethics, and other subjects.
Timothy Green wrote 26 essays and other compositions in the mid-1780s, and William Green wrote 30 items in the late 1790s. Almost all of the items are annotated drafts with the authors' corrections. Some items are hand-sewn groups of several pages, which sometimes contain multiple compositions. William Green's material includes 6 versions of an essay about the human desire for fame; he also occasionally wrote about education, particularly of young children, and composed a dialogue concerning topics including gender relations, marriage, money, and education. Both brothers considered topics related to morality and ethics, such as jealousy, order, fear, and idleness. Timothy Green commented on the American Revolution and related political issues, including the Revolution's effect on Europe; 2 of his writings concern language and linguistics. The collection also contains a letter that Timothy Green wrote to his father (June 1784).
The collection's donor has arranged, transcribed, and annotated each document, and has provided detailed descriptions of each group of materials in the collection.
Dr. John Green (1736-1799) and Mary Ruggles (d. 1814) of Worcester, Massachusetts, had 13 children, including Timothy and William Elijah. Timothy Green was born in Worcester on January 9, 1765. He graduated from the College of Rhode Island (now Brown University) in 1786, and later married Mary Martin. Green practiced law in Worcester until 1788, when he moved to New York City. He worked in the real estate industry and was lost at sea in 1812 or 1813.
William Elijah Green was born in Worcester on January 31, 1777, and graduated from the College of New Jersey in 1798. He practiced law in Grafton, Massachusetts (1801-1805), and Worcester, Massachusetts (1805-1830), and later became a farmer. He died on July 27, 1865.
