TYPED LETTER SIGNED by the clergyman and president of Western Reserve University and Adelbert College CHARLES FRANKLIN THWING, regretting that, due to the University's financial commitments, he can't act as sponsor for lectures by Ernest Thompson Seton. Thwing, Charles Franklin (1853-1937). American clergyman and educator, President of Western Reserve University & Adelbert College. Education

Cleveland, Ohio, March 14, 1903., 1903. Very good. - Over 230 words typed on his 11 inch high by 8-1/2 inch wide "President's Room / Western Reserve University / Adelbert College / Cleveland" stationery. The University's president Charles Franklin Thwing thanks the American impressario and lecture manager Major James P. Pond for the gift of an inscribed copy of Pond's lecture on Henry Ward Beecher. He goes on to explain that "I dare not undertake any financial responsibility regarding the coming of Ernest Thompson Seton to Cleveland." He explains that several academic lecturers "are coming to us in the next weeks." He hopes that Major Pond will be his guest the next time he is in Cleveland and that "I shall be very glad, of course, it is needless to say, to arrange for you to lecture; and yet be it said even a man like you I hesitate to ask in a formal way, for the reason that I find academic audiences are usually small for general lecturers, however fascinating the subject, however eminent the lecturer." Signed "Charles F. Thwing" with a couple of minor corrections in his hand. Pond has stamped that he has answered the letter at the very top. Folded for mailing with short tears to the edges of the horizontal fold and minor creases to the edges. Very good. The American clergyman and educator Charles Franklin Thwing (1853-1937) was president of Cleveland's Western Reserve University and Adelbert College. In that role, he signed a petition for President William McKinley to mediate the Boer War conflict between Great Britain and the Transvall and the Orange Free States. Thwing was a member of the National Negro Committee, a precursor of the NAACP, and a supporter of the subsequently created NAACP.