Unfortunately, Edwards had not the time, nor the money, nor the health necessary to bring his project to completion. Although the collection has been augmented under successors, Father Paul J. Foik, C.S.C., and Father Thomas T. McAvoy, C.S.C., the present Archivist of the University of Notre Dame, the ambitious scheme for an official American Catholic archives had to be given up in 1918 when Canon Law was changed so as to require each bishop to maintain his own archives.

The Records of the Diocese of Louisiana and the Floridas (1576-1803), subject of this microfilm publication, are part of a larger group of papers pertaining to the Archdiocese of New Orleans down to 1897. The collection was acquired in the 1890's by Edwards through the generosity of Archbishop Janssens. Everything for the period in question, except photostatic copies made for use in the Notre Dame Archives and duplicates of a few items, has been filmed. The material relating to the period after 1803 has not been filmed because there are restrictions upon its use. It may be consulted, however, at the Archives with the permission of the Archivist.

Although the first two items in the collections are dated 1576 and 1633, respectively, and there are a number of items for the period from 1708 to 1783, the great bulk of material pertains to the years 1786 through 1803. Consulted until now mainly by historians of the Catholic Church, it should prove useful also to secular historians because of the close connection between Church and State which existed during both the French and Spanish colonial regimes in Louisiana and Florida. Photostatic copies of all the items in the collection, as well as photostatic copies of the calendars for those portions that have already been calendared, are in possession of the New Orleans Archdiocesan Archives.

According to a tradition, most of the papers of Bishop Penalver, as well as those of his successor, Bishop DuBourg, were destroyed during the Civil War. Bricked up in a chimney for safekeeping when New Orleans was threatened by Union troops, it was discovered later that someone had neglected to close the chimney at the top and that, consequently, rain had poured in and turned the papers into a mass of pulp. Whether copies of at least some of the items thus lost have survived in the dossiers pertaining to Penalver's administration of the diocese or whether the papers destroyed were personal papers or official papers which dealt with other matters is not known.

In addition to this collection in the University of Notre Dame Archives, there are numerous other collections both in the United States and in foreign countries which pertain to the ecclesiastical as well as to the secular history of colonial Louisiana and Florida. Although far too numerous to list here, references to these collections may be found in Philip M. Hamer's Guide to Archives and Manuscripts in the United States (Yale University Press, 1961), the National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections, Roger Baudier's The Catholic Church in Louisiana (New Orleans, 1939), Jean Delanglez's The French Jesuits in Lower Louisiana (1700-1763) (Loyola University of New Orleans, 1935), Charles Edwards O'Neill's Church and State in French Colonial Louisiana: Policy and Politics to 1732 (Yale University Press, 1966), Caroline Mays Brevard's two-volume History of Florida from the Treaty of 1763 (Florida State Historical Society, 1934), Michael V. Gannon's The Cross in the Sand: The Early Catholic Church in Florida 1513-1870 (University of Florida Press, 1965), and Michael J. Curley's Church and State in the Spanish Floridas (1783-1822) (Catholic University of America Press, 1940). The Florida State Historical Society has published in several volumes a number of manuscripts and documents pertaining to the history of their State. Documents edited by Manuel Serrano y Sanz and pertaining to both Florida and Louisiana may be found in Documentos Historicos de la Florida y la Luisiana Siglos XVI al XVIII (Madrid, 1912). For Louisiana itself there are James Alexander Robertson's two-volume edition, Louisiana under the Rule of Spain, France, and the United States 1785-1807 (Cleveland, 1911), and a recently published collection of items edited by Jack D.L. Holmes, Documentos Ineditos para la Historia de la Luisiana 1792-1810 (Madrid, 1963), which forms volume XV in the Coleccion Chimalistac de Libros y Documentos acerca de la Nueva Espana.

Editorial Procedure

The Records of the Diocese of Louisiana and the Floridas had been arranged chronologically and calendered prior to the inception of the present microfilm project. Where the particular item is a simple letter or document it was calendared as such. However, where, as often occurs, the particular item consists of a large dossier of documents or copies of documents and accounts of various proceedings, it was given a specific date -- often that of the last document or notation contained therein -- and a single inclusive calendar was drawn up for the entire dossier. Such dossiers will be found on the microfilm under the date assigned to them in the calendars although they quite often contain material for earlier years. Specific documents within each dossier appear in the same order that summaries of them appear in the calendars.

In a number of instances particular documents are so badly mildewed, water-stained or faded that it has been impossible, without risking the complete destruction of certain documents, even to separate various pages for filming. Under these circumstances targets have been used to explain the difficulty, the calendars for the items in question have then been filmed and, finally, whenever possible, the items themselves have been filmed, taking particular care to secure as readable an image as circumstances permit. In referring to the calendars the user is cautioned that they were prepared as an aid to research not as a substitute for the documents themselves, and that, consequently, the University of Notre Dame Archives does not guarantee their accuracy.

Since the particular dates of various items often do not appear on the face of the items themselves and since documents of various dates are often filmed together under one date because calendared under that date, targets bearing the date under which they were calendared have been prepared and filmed before each such item or group. Items dated only by month and year appear at the beginning of that month. Items dated only by year appear at the beginning of that year. In addition, an alphabetical list, which appears both in this Guide and on the first roll of microfilm and which includes the names of the authors of the various items to be found in the collection as well as the names of particular persons or places under which various dossiers have been calendared, has been prepared as part of the present microfilm project. This list, used in conjunction with the calendars which have been filmed on the first roll of microfilm and the date targets which appear before each item or group of items, should enable the researcher to locate quickly any particular item of interest.

As an aid to indentification and citation, each frame on each roll has been given a specific number which will be found on the lower right-hand corner of the frame. No matter how careful the editors and filmers are, there are bound to be cases where, after a whole roll has been filmed, it becomes necessary to either add or delete a frame. Obviously, this throws off the numerical sequence of the frame numbers. To meet this difficulty we have employed the following technique: when a frame has had to be added, we have used the number of the preceding frame and added an "A" to it; when a frame has had to be deleted, the number assigned to that frame simply does not appear. While these procedures are a compromise with perfection, they are realistic in terms of the problems which unfortunately arise in microfilming, especially when the alternative might well involve several refilmings of