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Miles Poindexter papers, 1897-1940

Overview of the Collection

Creator
Poindexter, Miles, 1868-1946
Title
Miles Poindexter papers
Dates
1897-1940 (inclusive)
Quantity
189.79 cubic feet (442 boxes )
Collection Number
3828 (Accession No. 3828-001)
Summary
Papers of a Superior Court Judge in Washington State, a Congressman, a United States Senator, and a United States Ambassador to Peru
Repository
University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections
Special Collections
University of Washington Libraries
Box 352900
Seattle, WA
98195-2900
Telephone: 2065431929
Fax: 2065431931
speccoll@uw.edu
Access Restrictions

Open to all users.

Request at UW

Languages
English.
Sponsor
Funding for encoding this finding aid was partially provided through a grant awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities
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Biographical Note

Miles Poindexter, attorney, member of Congress from Washington State, and diplomat, was born in 1868 in Tennessee and grew up in Virginia. He attended Washington and Lee University (undergraduate and law school), receiving his law degree in 1891. He moved to Walla Walla, Washington, was admitted to the bar and began his law practice. He entered politics soon after his arrival and ran successfully for County Prosecutor as a Democrat in 1892. Poindexter moved to Spokane in 1897 where he continued the practice of law. He switched to the Republican Party in Spokane, where he received an appointment as deputy prosecuting attorney (1898-1904). In 1904 he was elected Superior Court Judge.

Poindexter became identified with progressive causes and it was as a progressive Republican and a supporter of Theodore Roosevelt that he was elected to the House of Representatives in 1908 and to the Senate in 1910. He was an outspoken member of the progressive Republican bloc, known as "insurgents," who revolted against the leadership of Congress between 1909 and 1912. After Roosevelt's split from the Republican Party during the 1912 presidential campaign, Poindexter reluctantly joined the Progressive Party. Dissatisfaction with Wilson's foreign policy and his own loss of enthusiasm for reform measures coincided with his return to the Republican Party in 1915. His efforts on behalf of tariff reform and the regulation of the railroads, banks and other "interests" pleased his political supporters in Washington State, and he won another term to the Senate in 1916.

During his tenure as Senator, Poindexter served on the Interstate Commerce, Judiciary, Mines and Mining, Naval Affairs, Post Office and Post Roads, Pacific Islands and Puerto Rico, and Indian Depredations committees, as well as Committees on Expenditures in the Interior Department and the War Department. One of Poindexter's more notable legislative proposals dealt with the problem of unemployment in a manner that foreshadowed the New Deal. In 1913 he introduced a bill which would have created an "industrial army" to construct public works. He was also a proponent of military preparedness and favored expansion of the Navy.

Poindexter was intensely nationalistic and worked to suppress opposition to America's entry into World War I. He favored wartime censorship, the Sedition Act, and considered pacifism disloyal. He also spoke strongly against "alien slackers," immigrants who turned in their first citizenship papers to avoid the draft. After the war he was an outspoken critic of President Wilson and the League of Nations. He believed Wilson was sympathetic to Bolshevism and criticized the administration for leniency in handling the prosecution of radicals. His position against labor unions and radical groups contributed to the "Red Scare" of 1919-1920.

Poindexter received national recognition, in particular, for his stand against the League of Nations and being pro-American and anti-anarchists/Bolsheviks. This national recognition was one factor in his decision to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 1920. He was the first Republican to declare his candidacy (October 26, 1919) but lost the nomination to Warren G. Harding.

After the 1920 election Poindexter became a Harding Republican, favoring business interests over those of labor and farmers. In 1922, he lost his Senate re-election bid to C.C. Dill, a progressive Democrat. In 1923 President Harding appointed Poindexter ambassador to Peru, where he served until 1928. He made another unsuccessful attempt to regain his Senate seat that year. After the death of his wife in 1929 he returned to Virginia. Following his retirement from political life, Poindexter produced three manuscripts about the Inca civilization, two of which ( The Ayar Incaand Peruvian Pharaohs) were published. He died in Virginia in 1946.

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Content Description

Correspondence with constituents, political associates, and family, literary manuscripts, legislation, campaign material, scrapbooks, account books, charts, clippings, photos, and other papers, chiefly relating to Poindexter's service as U.S. representative (1909-1911) and senator (1911-1923) from Washington, and ambassador to Peru (1923-1928). Major subjects include the revolt against the leadership in Congress by an insurgent group (1909-1912) and the presidential election of 1912, in which Poindexter was a prominent Progressive; League of Nations; World War I and preparedness; tariffs; railroad regulation; anti-communism/anti-radicalism; Latin American relations; Peruvian culture; naval affairs; Indian affairs; and land cases in Washington State. Private papers include correspondence and genealogical material relating to the Poindexter family of King and Queen County and Rockbridge County, Virginia; and materials relating to his books and articles on the native cultures in Peru.

There is much overlap among the eight series in the Poindexter papers. Similar subject matter, correspondents, and dates, are often found in multiple series. Series III uses the same subject categories as Series V. Series V and VI have overlapping content and correspondence. Both series include subject files, case files and requests for patronage jobs. The two chronological correspondence series, Series I and IV, overlap in dates as well. Series VII contains misplaced material which belong in other series. Correspondence exchanges are sometimes split between different files, apparently as a result of misfiling by Poindexter's staff.

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Use of the Collection

Alternative Forms Available

A microfilm copy of the collection, Microfilm A471, in 180 reels, is available in the Libraries' Microform & Newspaper Collections, although it is a badly worn negative.

View selections from this collection in digital format.

Restrictions on Use

Creator's literary rights have been transferred to the University of Washington Libraries.

Preferred Citation

Miles Poindexter papers. Special Collections, University of Washington Libraries, Seattle, Washington.

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Administrative Information

Arrangement

Arranged in 8 series:

  • Series I: Chronological, 1897-1937
  • Series II: Peru ambassadorship, 1923-1928
  • Series III: Code filing system, 1910-1918
  • Series IV: Chronological, 1913-1923
  • Series V: Subjects, alphabetical, 1912-1923
  • Series VI: Subjects, alphabetical, 1908-1938
  • Series VII: Memorabilia, 1897-1939
  • Series VIII: Miscellany, 1884-1940

Custodial History

Following Poindexter's retirement from public life, he officially donated his papers to the University of Virginia in 1939. The availability of Poindexter's papers in Virginia interested professors at the University of Washington and Washington State University; they attempted to get the collection transferred to the State of Washington, and failing that, arranged for its microfilming in 1946-1947.

In 1985, archivists at the University of Virginia and the University of Washington agreed to transfer the Poindexter papers to the University of Washington Libraries.

Acquisition Information

The bulk of the Poindexter papers were transferred from the University of Virginia to the University of Washington in 1986. A package of oversize material overlooked by the University of Virginia in 1986 was transferred in 1989.

Processing Note

In 1987 Michael Harrell was hired as an intern from Western Washington University program in archives management to refine the processing of Series III. In summer 2004 another Western Washington University intern, Megan Carlisle, assisted by Morag Stewart and Chris Carlin, refoldered, retitled and rearranged the Legislation correspondence in Series V; Carlisle and Stewart also refoldered the Indian Affairs subseries of Series V and began an encoded finding aid. In fall 2004 and 2005 Kathleen Crosman, Leslie Steinman and Morag Stewart continued work on the other subsections of Series V, beginning with Miscellaneous Correspondence. Morag Stewart also weeded, refoldered and inventoried part of Series VI. In 2006 Series VIII was processed by Janet Polata.

The Poindexter papers have been processed in stages, but the basic arrangement of the papers as they were received from the University of Virginia has been retained. Subsequent processing of selected series by the University of Washington staff concentrated on weeding non-essential material and re-inventorying those series.

In a 1956 letter, the University of Virginia's Curator of Manuscripts states that the files were processed in 1938 and kept according to the filing systems developed by Senator Poindexter, although some rearrangement was made in the 1940's when the file "bundles" were checked to see if they conformed to Poindexter's filing systems.

The 1946 microfilming project was instigated by University of Washington Professor Charles M. Gates for the Pacific Northwest History Project. It was carried out as a joint undertaking of the University of Washington and Washington State University (then State College of Washington). Preparation began in the fall of 1946 with staff at the University of Virginia writing summary descriptions of "bundles" and preparing material for filming. Files were removed from their original folders and organized into artificial "files" to facilitate filming. These resulting files were numbered in sequence within series and divided up into folders, presumably by page count since letters were occasionally split between folders. Target file sheets were put into the papers at the beginning of each numbered file. In letters between one University of Virginia staff member and Professor Gates, the lack of organization and overlapping filing systems employed by Poindexter and his staff are mentioned, and the suggestion was made to reorganize Series III. Nevertheless, most of the papers were filmed by Remington Rand as they had been received in 1939. Series VI was filmed first and the remaining series were filmed in numerical order. Not included in the filming were routine correspondence relating to discharges after World War I; requests for publications and replies; routine correspondence relating to pensions; personal invitations, Christmas cards, greetings, etc. Groupings of bank statements, cancelled checks, routine business papers, and clippings, as well as published material such as public documents and copies of popular periodicals, were also left out where deemed appropriate.

When the Poindexter papers were transferred to the University of Washington, they were accompanied by a single volume red inventory. In 1987 Series III was further processed and a new inventory to this series prepared which superceded the description in the “red inventory.” Little rearrangement was done, but portions of the series were discarded. See the brief introduction to each file in the 1987 Series III finding aid for additional informaA detailed "Table of Contents" was created and filmed to accompany the microfilmed papers. The two-volume paper copy of the contents was then sent to the University of Washington in May 1947 and the microfilm arrived soon after.tion on discards and for a selective index to names (personal, corporate, geographical and topical).

Initial processing of Series V began in the summer of 2004 in the course of a Political Papers initiative. The Legislation subseries was refoldered, retitled, and rearranged. The correspondence had been arranged in a kind of overlapping alphabetical order. The first group of files went from A to Br, the second from Bo to Ca, etc. Some of the files were retitled for clarification and the whole rearranged into a purely alphabetical order. The Indian Affairs and Land Office subseries in Series V were also refoldered, but not retitled or rearranged, with a very few exceptions. An encoded inventory for Series V was begun.

Starting in fall 2004 greater liberties were taken with the remainder of Series V, starting with the Miscellaneous Correspondence subseries, and the first part of Series VI. In accordance with current records management guidelines for congressional papers correspondence and established University of Washington practice, certain types of correspondence were discarded. Routine requests (for seeds, flags, the congressional record, etc.), Case Files, and requests for patronage jobs as well as duplicate copies of published material, were extracted and discarded. A few examples of the case files discarded were retained to demonstrate the type of issues that Poindexter's office dealt with, or because they were integrated with more political correspondence. Of the patronage requests, only those for high level jobs, such as federal judgeships and cabinet positions, were retained. Folder titles were clarified and the encoded inventory was expanded. Minimal reorganization was done, mostly involving moving substantive letters originally filed with Case Files to the correspondent's name. Retained items in the "miscellaneous" sections of several files were refiled by correspondent's name or with related topical material. One major change was moving file 196 after file 207 where it clearly belonged. Processing in 2005 ended with box 393 in Series VI.

The process of weeding materials from Series III in 1987 and Series V and VI in 2004-2005 reduced the volume of the papers. As a consequence box numbers noted in the red inventory no longer match for Series III and V and the processed portion of Series VI. In addition there are now gaps in the box number sequence between Series III and IV and between Series V and VI. During processing in 2005, two small accessions, nos. 837-1 and 3828-2, were merged with 3828-1.

Processing of Series VIII was begun in 2006 and completed in 2007. It is a consolidation of the remainder of Series VIII, after non-essential material was discarded, and stray ephemera and other material that was not included on any of the original inventories.

162 photographs were relocated to the Miles C. Poindexter Collection, PH Coll.174 in1987.

Approximately 2000 loose and mounted photographs, 2 framed portraits, 6 photo albums, 2 X-rays and 2 glass slides, circa 1865-1929, were relocated to the Photography Collections in 2006.

Bibliography

Howard W. Allen, Poindexter of Washington, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1981.

Separated Materials

Material Described Separately:

Miles Poindexter photograph collection (PH0174)

Related Materials

The Eastern Washington State Historical Society in Spokane, Washington has 7 feet of Miles Poindexter papers, dated 1868-1946.

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Detailed Description of the Collection

 

Names and SubjectsReturn to Top

Subject Terms

  • Archaeology--Peru
  • Diplomatic and consular service
  • Diplomatic and consular service, American--Peru
  • Indians of North America
  • Naval art and science
  • Operational readiness (Military science)
  • Personal Papers/Corporate Records (University of Washington)
  • Political parties--United States
  • Practice of law--Washington (State)
  • Presidents--United States--Election--1912
  • Railroads and state--United States
  • Tariff--United States
  • World War, 1914-1918

Personal Names

  • Poindexter, Miles, 1868-1946--Archives

Geographical Names

  • Latin America--Foreign relations--United States
  • Peru--Antiquities
  • Peru--Civilization
  • United States--Armed Forces--Operational readiness
  • United States--Commerce
  • United States--Foreign relations--Latin America
  • United States--Politics and government--20th century
  • Virginia--Genealogy
  • Washington (State)--Politics and government--1889-1950


2007 (Last modified: 7/17/2017)

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