The Harry Ransom Center acquired a significant collection of books and manuscripts from the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary in the early 1980s. The seminary’s library was pressed for space to house its growing collection, and the material transferred to the Ransom Center, generally of a rare and fragile character, was not closely related to the current programs of the seminary.

The collection is organized in four series: I. Sermons and Religious Manuscripts, 1678-1914, II. Spanish Language Manuscripts, 1515-1841, III. Other Manuscripts, 1301-1928, and IV. Music Manuscripts, circa 1550-circa 1910. Within the first three series, items have been arranged alphabetically by author, or by title if no author is discernible. In Series IV arrangement is chronological. Titles have been supplied if none were present, and these are given within brackets. The range of languages found among the manuscripts is broad: English, Spanish, Latin, Hebrew, German, French, and Italian are all represented by multiple works.

Series I embraces collections of English-language sermons and lectures from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, along with several related manuscripts in other languages. The materials are, in the main, in their original bindings.

The manuscripts found in Series II are divided into two subseries. Subseries A. Cartas Ejecutorias, 1515-1805, contains fourteen examples of these royal documents confirming noble descent. The specimens held in the collection are on paper or vellum; most of these are decorated with armorial devices, religious art, and initials in color. Several are in contemporary leather, others in original vellum; some bear tax stamps. Subseries B. includes other Spanish language collections of archival material and genealogical documents dating from circa 1600 to 1841.

Series III embraces an extremely variegated assortment of manuscripts, including two seventeenth century British legal documents, a nineteenth century Italian treatise on pyrotechnics, an eighteenth century work on disorders of the head, and a two-volume sixteenth century history of Zurich, Switzerland. The oldest manuscript found here is a royal privilege of King Ferdinand IV of Castile dating from 1301 and written in Old Spanish.

Represented in the final series are several manuscripts of West European origin, dating from the sixteenth to the early nineteenth centuries along with a substantial group of Hebrew scores in Latin transliteration created in L’viv, Ukraine and London. These latter were composed at least in part by Eduard and Herman Darewski.