Edward A. Sutherland Collection

Collection

Identifier: Collection 84

Staff Only

Content Description

This personal collection contains some Sutherland family materials and letters as well as a portion of his prolific writing and presentation output. Sutherland was a trustee of two estates, papers of which are included here. The estates are those of John S. Cominns and Mary and Ellen Woodworth. Also included are some clippings and a few personal artifacts.

Scope Description It is important to understand that the Center for Adventist Research, for many years, held two large Madison-related collections received at different times from different sources but with extensive overlap. These collections remained unprocessed. Additionally, the Center held a small Sutherland collection received from yet another source, plus collections from Warren Ashworth and a White/Sutherland correspondence-focused collection. When the Center received a third large Madison related collection in 2013, with still more considerable overlap with the existing two collections, we embarked on a multi-year task of merging the different but overlapping collections into one large, comprehensive whole. Through this work, we “spun out” more Sutherland personal material from the institutional collections which were combined to augment the Sutherland Collection here described. Several other personal collections spun out as well. These are the DeGraw, Ard, and Scott collections.

This collection, while drawing from a very large institutional collection, is not comprehensive in its coverage of Sutherland’s life and career. However, the Andrews University Center for Adventist Research holds several other manuscript collections, that, when taken together with this one, will provide a full coverage of Sutherland’s remarkable and prolific life. One collection is the collected primary sources from the work of Warren Ashworth who prepared a dissertation on Sutherland entitled, Edward Alexander Sutherland and the Seventh-day Adventist Educational Reform: the Denominational Years, in 1986. [See G.S Diss. A831.] At this point, April 2017, the Ashworth source material collection is not ready for research use. There is a large Madison Institutions manuscript collection [see Collection 167] which has a wide variety of resources related to Sutherland. As the founder and leader of Madison for so many years, Madison’s history is closely intertwined with Sutherland. There is yet another collection with a focus on correspondence between Sutherland, Ellen White and W. C. White. [See Collection 231.] Lastly, there are several related collections of people who were associated with Sutherland during his Madison years. These include Bessie DeGraw [Collection 339], the Ard Family, and Mary Kate Gafford.