This journal was found among the papers of Benjamin Smith Barton, who was Pursh's patron, after his death in 1817. For provenance of manuscript see ms. notes in printed edition by Thomas P. James - 581.974:P97.

A merchant and member of the Society of Friends, Pim Nevins (1756-1833) lived most of his life in the English midlands. Recorded in Pigot's Directory of 1834 as a member of the gentry resident in Hunslet Lane, Leeds, Nevins was a woollen cloth manufacturer, finisher, and merchant whose operations were located at Larchfield Mill, near Huddersfield. During a voyage to visit Friends' meetings in the United States in 1802-1803, Pim Nevins kept a journal to record his thoughts and experiences. In presenting a copy of his diary to his children, he wrote: "some parts [of the diary] wch. being by way of memorandum to assist my memory will of course be no ways interesting to you; other parts being fill'd with the effusions of my own thoughts, will I fear be dry to you unless your minds should in some measure be dip'd into the like state with mine when influencing my pen; some other parts may entertain you." The journal includes a mixture of description of the cities, towns and landscape through which Nevins passed and accounts of his visits with Friends in New York city, Philadelphia, Wilmington, Baltimore, Washington, Alexandria, Bethlehem, Pa., Easton, Pa., the Pocono Mountains, northern New Jersey, New Brunswick, N.J., and Trenton, N.J. It also includes a delicate watercolor drawing of the Delaware Water Gap.

Robert Woodruff was secretary to John Anstey, Loyalists' Claims Commissioner. This journal relates his travels with John Anstey. He describes the towns he visited, and comments on episodes of the American Revolution and on the Federal Convention and state ratifying conventions. The journal covers a trip through New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, South Carolina and Georgia. He and Anstey spent a night at Mount Vernon in 1786. Mentions B. Franklin, G. Washington, APS Hall. Also refers to Five Nations country, Georgia's warfare with Creek Indians, and Chief McGillivray. For identification, see G. Washington's Diary, Dec.11, 1786.

A physician, natural historian, and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Benjamin Smith Barton (1766-1815) was one of the central figures in Philadelphia's early national scientific establishment. Having received his medical training in European universities, Barton was appointed Professor at the University of Pennsylvania in 1789, lecturing on botany, materia medica, natural history. A prolific author, he established his reputation as one of the nation's preeminent botanists through his botanical text book The Elements of Botany (1803), but his contribtions to zoology, ethnology, and medicine were equally noteworthy. Barton's monograph on the "fascinating faculty" of the rattlesnake and his efforts in historical linguistics (New Views of the Origin of the Tribes and Nations of America, 1798) were widely read, and his Philadelphia Medical and Physical Journal (1804-1809) was one of the nation's first medical journals and an important outlet for natural historical research. The Barton Papers offer a comprehensive view of the professional work of Benjamin Smith Barton from the time of his return to the United States in 1789 until his death. The collection is divided into five series: Correspondence, Subject Files, Bound Volumes, Graphic Materials, and Printing Plates. The collection includes a particularly valuable series of botanical, medical, and natural historical drawings collected by Barton for research, reference, and publication. Among the many artists represented are William Bartram, Frederick Pursh, Pierre Turpin, and Benjamin Henry Latrobe.

In addition to family and business correspondence, the Charles Nicoll Bancker Family Papers contains various documents, such as a furniture inventory volume (30pp.); a Daybook, 1795-1800 (120pp.); and a very interesting journal (unidentified, but by one of the Banckers, and filed under "Description of a trip..."), from New York to Albany and back, between July 20-Aug. 15, 1793 (1 vol., 31 pp.). It contains detailed observations of the Hudson River and the towns along the way. Bancker was involved in business and trade prior to 1826, and in insurance after that date, so there is material relating to those topics in this collection. He owned a substantial library of the period, which was used by Charles Wilkes's Expedition after 1837 (see Reynell Coates to Bancker). This library, along with Bancker's notable scientific instrument collection, was sold after his death and there are published auction catalogues in the collection. There is much family correspondence from: Anne E. Bancker, Charles Gerard Bancker, Evert Bancker, Sarah U. Bancker, Violetta Bancker Talbot, Elizabeth Bancker Teackle, and John Teackle.

This diary records David Brainard's sermons and travels among the Indians of New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

This is primarily a collection of letters and manuscripts sent to Wistar by prominent men who were among his many correspondents. These documents reflect his broad interests, including botany, paleontology, medicine, the American Philosophical Society, and André Michaux's plans for exploring the Missouri.

Written from China to his family, the letters of James Bancker contain descriptions of the social life of the Americans and English in China, of Hong Kong after the British acquisition of that place, and of anti-British riots in Canton. A long letter describes the outward voyage from New York to Canton; several letters given an account of a visit to the Philippines; and there is a partial journal of Bancker's return home through the Red Sea.

The correspondence is principally to Zaccheus Collins (1810-1840), with bills, receipts, and notes on Rafinesque vs. Parker; letters from Collins, L.A. Tarascon, Lewis C. Beck, John Torrey, and Charles W. Short (1817-1835); and miscellaneous correspondence and documents relating to Rafinesque vs. Parker, with an account of the Felician Society of Feliciana County, Illinois (1820). The writings are chiefly on botanical topics, and include notes and essays on Indians, Blacks, grapes and wine-making, banking, and speculation. Rafinesque's growing interest in Indian antiquities, linguistics, and history is apparent in letters after 1820. There is an account of Rafinesque's scientific travels in North America and southern Europe (1800-1832), and a bibliography. The botanical notes include descriptions of specimens collected by Lewis and Clark, Patrick Gass, and Henry Muhlenberg.

This is a collection of letters, letterbooks, account books, scrapbooks, etc., concerning the families of Robert Hare and Thomas Willing. The letters and other documents include early family material, as well as documents written by numerous family relations, and some obviously only collected by them. The Willing family letters (1744-1901) are diverse, concerning family matters, business, society, comments on the Civil War, etc. There are numerous letters from Thomas Willing, many concerning his banking career, as President of the Bank of North America and later at the first Bank of the U.S. The Hare family letters (1724-1965) are more extensive and diverse, including much on travel in the U.S. and elsewhere. There is a letter from Robert Hare Jr. concerning steam engines, and letters from Horace Binney Hare concerning his education at Harvard, 1860, his trip to San Francisco and the west, 1862, and numerous letters written while a soldier in the Civil War. There are many letters from Horace Binney (1780-1875, DAB) to his daughter Esther, who was married to John Innes Clark Hare (1816-1905, DAB), concerning family travel and court cases. There are also letters from outside the family, such as those from Dorothea L. Dix. The bound volumes include, among others: Robert Hare letterbooks (1824-1825, 1841-1857), estate records, and laboratory expense accounts (1818-1860); G. H. Hare's journal or log of cruises aboard the U.S. United States (1841) and U.S. Flint (1845); Horace Binney Hare's 1862 journal of his trip to San Francisco. There are account books and accounts (1754-1795) kept by Thomas Willing; accounts of the controversy over the estate of John Innes Clark; and records of the First Colored Wesley Methodist Church of Philadelphia (receipt book, 1820-1848; minute book, 1827-1844). There are also Philadelphia court records, and minutes of the Common Council of the city, 1832.

Through his craniometic studies of human races, the Philadelphia physician Samuel George Morton (1799-1851) exerted a profound influence on the development of physical anthropology in antebellum America, and made substantial contributions to mineralogy, paleontology, and natural history. Relating primarily to Morton's scientific interests, the Morton Papers include insights into Morton's perspectives on education, medical practice, geology and mineralogy, craniology, paleontology, the Wilkes Exploring Expedition (also known as the United States Exploring Expedition 1838-1842), and his two major monographs, the Crania Americana and Crania Aegyptiaca. Several of the letters were written by Morton in his capacity as corresponding secretary of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. Also included in this collection are Morton's "Some Remarks on the Infrequency of Mixed Offspring Between the European and Australian Races" (1850), Joseph Barclay Pentland's notes on the aborigines of Peru (ca. 1840?), and newspaper clippings on Morton's death; a diary of Morton's trip to the West Indies, 1834, a set of craniological sketches for use in Crania Americana, and a microfilm of letters in private hands, written to Morton, 1838-1844

An extensive family collection, the Vaux Family Papers center around the lives of George Vaux V (1721-1803), George Vaux VII (1779-1836), and George Vaux VIII (1832-1915), their business partners, siblings, wives, and children, and encompasses the extended Vaux family of Warders, Sansoms, Heads, Graffs, Morrises, Cressons, and Mayberrys. The collection includes correspondence, financial accounts, receipts, business records, journals, diaries, photographs, and legal documents.

This collection contains miscellaneous letters and papers relating to explorations of South America, Cuba, and Mexico; scientific investigations; Latin American antiquities and linguistics; and publications. There are also copies of 26 letters from Humboldt to Pierre Hyacinth Azais and Jules Berger de Xivrey, from originals at the Duke University Medical Center Library.

This correspondence is principally concerned with business between Pershouse and his brother James in England, with comments on conditions and events in the United States, including anti-British feeling, Thomas Paine's return to America, Jefferson's administration, and immigration. The papers include Pershouse's journal (1800-1838), which includes accounts of travels in England, France, and the United States, letterbooks (1836-1862) of Henry Pershouse, nephew of John, chiefly on business matters, and two volumes of Pershouse genealogical data, compiled by B.M. Pershouse Bayley (1899).

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark were explorers. This collection contains the manuscript journals kept by Lewis and Clark on their travels to the source of the Missouri River and across the continent to the Pacific Ocean. There are interlineations throughout by Nicholas Biddle, who published his narrative "History of the Expedition of Captains Lewis and Clark" (1814).

The natural historian Richard Harlan was a pioneer in the study of comparative anatomy and vertebrate paleontology in the United States during the years following the War of 1812. Having received his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1818, Harlan was employed as an instructor of anatomy at Joseph Parrish's school and at the Philadelphia Museum. A practicing physician and member of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia and the American Philosophical Society, Harlan made important contributions in comparative neuroanatomy, paleontology, herpetology, and systematic zoology. He died shortly after moving to New Orleans in 1839. Harlan's journals document two of the three overseas voyages he undertook during his lifetime. The first took place in 1816-1817 when Harlan was still a medical student, accompanying an East Indiaman to Calcutta as ship's surgeon. The second took place when Harlan was at the peak of his career in 1833, venturing to England, France, and Italy to strengthen contacts with European colleagues. Interesting travel narratives in themselves, the journals mingle enthusiasm for the new and exotic with a touch of Harlan's truculance. The European journal includes a valuable account of the 3nd meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science at Cambridge at which Harlan delivered a paper on fossil reptiles.

Though less well known than their peers Lewis and Clark, William Dunbar and George Hunter played an important role in the early scientific exploration of the Louisiana Purchase. While the original goal of organizing a southern counterpart to the Corps of Discovery proved overly ambitious, Dunbar and Hunter provided important geographic information for future explorations and gave the first scientific description of the Hot Springs of Arkansas and Ouachita Mountains. The four surviving journals of George Hunter provide engaging accounts of travel in the Ohio and Mississippi Valley in 1796, 1802, and 1809, and include the most interesting record of the expedition to the Hot Springs of Arkansas in 1804-1805, complete with his detailed notes on natural history and meteorology. The volumes also contain various references to relations with the Delaware, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Cherokee, and Osage Indians. The APS owns a contemporary copy of Hunter's journal ("Journal up the Red and Washita Rivers with William Dunbar"; Mss.917.6.Ex7), from which extracts were printed in Thomas Jefferson, Message... Communicating Discoveries Made in Exploring the Missouri (New York, 1806), and which is described by Isaac J. Cox, "An Early Explorer of the Louisiana Purchase," APS Library Bulletin 1946: 73. The journals were edited by John F. McDermott and published in APS Transactions 53 (1963).