A shadowy figure at best, the artist Antonio Zeno Shindler worked at the Smithsonian Institution from after the Civil War until the turn of the 20th century, specializing in ethnographic subjects. He was responsible for printing or taking a large number of photographs of American Indians exhibited there in 1869. The 95 studio portraits in the Shindler Collection were part of a suite of 301 images that comprised the first photographic exhibition at the Smithsonian, and that are documented in the catalogue Photographic Portraits of North American Indians in the Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution (1867). The individuals depicted were members of delegations sent to Washington during the years 1852, 1857-1858, and 1867-1869 from the following nations: Cherokee, Cheyenne, Chippewa, Choctaw, Dakota Sioux (Brule, Miniconjou, Sans Arc, Santee, Sisseton, Two-Kettle, Yankton), Osage, Pawnee, Ponca, Potawatomi, Sac and Fox, Seminole, and Ute. Shindler printed the earlier photographs (mostly taken by the McClees Gallery) and was photographer for the later delegations.

Dalton Dorr (1846-1901) was the curator, secretary and director of the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art in Philadelphia, the forerunner of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, from 1880-1899. A journal, written in 1897, copied from his notes and from memory, of travels in Greenland (1869), the Indian Territory, Colorado and the Pacific coast (1872-73); Paris, England, Scotland, and Ireland (1882-85), with some sketches. He took the Greenland cruise with Isaac I. Hayes in 1869, which was described by Hayes in his "Land of Desolation" (New York: Harper, 1872). See also, a companion volume of albumen prints taken by William Bradford and other members of "Under the midnight sun: a pleasure cruise in Greenland" in the summer of 1869.

In 1910, the Eugenics Record Office was founded in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, as a center for the study of human heredity and a repository for genetic data on human traits. It merged with the Station for Experimental Evolution in 1920 to become the Department of Genetics at the Carnegie Institution, and under the direction of Charles B. Davenport and later of Albert Blakeslee and Milislav Demerec, it became the most important center for eugenic research in the nation. However with intellectual currents shifting, the Carnegie Institution stopped funding the office in 1939. It remained active until 1944, when its records were transferred to the Charles Fremont Dight Institute for the Promotion of Human Genetics at the University of Minnesota. When the Dight closed in 1991, the genealogical material was filmed by the Genealogical Society of Utah and given to the Center for Human Genetics; the non-genealogical material was not filmed and was given to the American Philosophical Society Library. Following the original order, the ERO Records are organized into thirteen series: I. Trait Files, 1670-1964 ; II. Trait Card Boxes, 1904-1939 ; III. Family Traits Card Boxes, 1920-1939 ; IV. RFT Submitters Card Catalog, 1910s-1930s ; V. Record of Family Traits, 1911-1940 ; VI. Fitter Family Studies, 1913-1936 ; VII. Field Worker Files, 1911-1926 ; VIII. Volunteer Collaborators, 1912-1939 ; IX. Pedigrees, 1828-1926 ; X. Harry H. Laughlin Files, 1915-1938 ; XI. Bibliographia Eugenica, 1734-1934 ; XII. Midget Schedules, 1919-1964 ; XIII. Index Card Boxes, 1910s-1930s.

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 youngest son of Charles Willson Peale, Titian Ramsay Peale was an accomplished artist, naturalist, and explorer. This collection of ink, pencil, and watercolor sketches, with some engravings and lithographs, forms the bulk of Peale's artistic output. The drawings can be grouped into several periods of artistic output: pre-1818 (primarily watercolors of butterflies); from the Stephen Harriman Long Expedition to the American west in 1819-1820, on which Peale traveled as zoologist (there are views of animals, Indians, landscapes, etc.); for his 1821-1838 interlude period, spent primarily on the east coast (insects, animals, moose hunting in Marine, his trip to South America in 1830-1831, coin and medal designs); his period as a naturalist on the worldwide U.S. Exploring Expedition under the command of Charles Wilkes, 1838-1842; from the 1849-1873 period when he sketched around Washington, D. C. and in New Jersey; and there are more than 160 undated sketches of: animal skulls and bones, birds, plants, fish, insects, landscapes, and zoology.

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.

The collection of Charles Coleman Sellers (1903-1980) contains copious and detailed documentation of the art of Charles Willson Peale and his family. It consists of working files for Sellers's numerous publications, including his Portraits and Miniatures by Charles Willson Peale (1952); Charles Willson Peale with Patron and Populace (1969); C. W. Peale's Portraits of Washington (1951); Benjamin Franklin in Portraiture (1962); Mr. Peale's Museum (1980). Most files include photographs of the art work, notes on the piece, and correspondence with authorities or owners. Other series include one relating to the paintings of various other Peales, including Anna C., James, Mary Jane, Raphaelle, Rembrandt, Rubens, and Sarah Miriam, and a miscellaneous artist file, which includes the same type of material and information on many eighteenth- and nineteenth-century artists, including Thomas Eakins, George Healy, Robert Edge Pine, William Rush, Thomas Sully, Benjamin West, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, etc. There is a separate Sellers collection at Dickinson College, primarily personal in nature.

Edward Adamson Hoebel (1906-1993) was an anthropologist and educator best known for his studies of the legal systems of pre-literate societies. Graduating from Columbia, where he had studied with Ralph Linton, Franz Boas, and Ruth Benedict, Hoebel early became a scholar on the legal cultures of the Plains Indians, including the Comanches and Cheyennes. After appointments at New York University and the University of Utah, he spent the majority of his academic career at the University of Minnesota, from which he became emeritus professor in 1972. The E. Adamson Hoebel Papers (1925-1993) contain correspondence, subject files, manuscripts of published and unpublished works by Hoebel, papers by colleagues and students, Hoebel's research notes, course materials, and photographs.

This online guide brings together photographs, engravings, lithographs, and paintings from a legacy APS collection known as the Prints and Photographs collection. The guide was created to provide online access to descriptive information for prints and photographs that were not associated with manuscripts collections. Some of these items are also described in the APS online public access catalog for printed materials. An in-house Print Collection card file arranged by name and subject provides item-level access to some of the items below and additional prints and photographs that do not yet have online descriptions. Former designations for these included the following: Persons, Places and things, Group pictures, Collections (manuscripts); Oversize--Persons, Oversize--Places and things, and Oversize--Collections (manuscripts). When researching at the library, please consult with reference staff to locate these items.

Founded in 1743 by Benjamin Franklin, the American Philosophical Society was the first learned society in the United States. For over 250 years, the Society has played an important role in American cultural and intellectual life. Until the mid-nineteenth century, the Society fulfilled the role of a national academy of science, national library and museum, and even patent office. Early members of the Society included Thomas Jefferson, David Rittenhouse, Benjamin Rush, Stephen Peter Du Ponceau, George Washington, and many other figures prominent in American history. The Archives of the American Philosophical Society consists of 192.25 linear feet of material, organized into thirteen record groups dating back to 1743. The Society's archives extensively documents not only the organization's historical development but also its role in American history and the history of science and technology.

An anthropologist, Pamela Wallace was the Head of Education at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History at the University of Oklahoma. The papers include correspondence, research, works by Wallace, audio recordings, color slides, photographs, and videos of Yuchi Indians.

The Mary Rosamond Haas papers are extensive, including correspondence, research notes, field notes, texts, lexical slip files, audio recordings, photographs, reprints and more, covering more than 100 languages of North America and Southeast Asia. Of particular value are notes and audio recordings from fieldwork from the 1930s on Ditidaht, Tunica, Natchez and Muscogee, work toward pedagogical materials for Thai, and groundbreaking comparative studies of several language families of North America.