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This series comprises the bulk of Watt Espy's primary and secondary research and is therefore the largest in the collection. Initially, approximately half of these documentation of execution records were arranged in an organized fashion alphabetically by state, or by federal, military, tribal or international categories and then alphabetically by an individual's name. The others were not arranged in any discernable scheme with a significant amount of materials kept as unorganized loose documents in boxes. Espy marked some files as "not written up," but it was ultimately unclear how these differed from other records. After careful review, the archivists decided to combine all of the documentation of executions together, divided the records into five subseries for executions conducted by all 50 states and the District of Columbia, federal executions, military executions, indigenous executions, and international executions, and subsequently arranged and inter-filed all the loose materials.

This series contains various materials that Manley used for his research. It includes court transcripts and briefs, photocopies of manuscripts, reports, notes, news clippings, correspondence, publications, and photographs. Some of this material was used in the writing of Manley's book, The Treaty of Fort Stanwix, 1784. The majority of the material relates to Native American issues, which was an important focus in Manley's legal career. A good portion of this series does have some relationship to legal issues, but it was not included in the Legal Papers Series either because it was not directly related to legal cases or Manley was not directly involved in the relevant cases.