The Frank and Virginia Williams Collection of Lincolniana represents a lifetime of collecting documents, books, artifacts, ephemera, philately, numismatics, paintings, and statuary related to the life of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War in general. Frank Williams began his collection as a child and has added to it all his life. The Williams Collection is the nation's largest privately owned holding of Lincoln research and display material and the country's most comprehensive privately owned Lincoln and Civil War library with over 40,000 items and valued at over $3 million. Frank and Virginia Williams donated their collection to Mississippi State University in 2017.
The Frank and Virginia Williams Collection includes the Claude Simmonds Collection, which contains clippings of twentieth-century newspaper, magazine, and journal articles that reference Lincoln. The Frank and Virginia Williams Collection also includes several other smaller collections featuring original manuscripts; of note is the Abraham Lincoln Original Manuscript Collection which contains numerous original letters and legal documents written by Abraham Lincoln. Other manuscript collections include: the McCorison Collection, Carl Schurz Collection, R.L. Hoxie Correspondence Collection, Bernhardt Wall Collection, Peleq Clarke Jr. Collection, and others. Finding aids for these manuscript collections are available online in the MSU Libraries' ArchivesSpace system.
The late David M. Rich (cataloger at Brown University) and Alfred Calabreta (Curator of Collections at Mystic Seaport, the Museum of America and the Sea) began cataloging and inventorying the collection in the mid-1980s. After 2017, MSU Libraries faculty and staff finished cataloging the book and pamphlet collections. MSU Library faculty and staff also completed inventorying the objects and ephemera pieces within the Frank and Virginia Williams Collection. Every item has been assigned a unique number. Full cataloging of the artifacts and ephemera continues. MSU Library faculty and staff work diligently to ensure that all inventories and cataloging were completed according to Library of Congress standards.
