Related to the Dupaix expeditions of 1806, four loose notebooks with 23 ink and pencil sketches of Mexican ruins and hieroglyphics. Fragmented text, in Spanish, with images of construction and decoration on stonework, pottery and buildings of various native ruins of the Yucatan. The APS manuscript sketch file has an inventory list of the images.

Two sketchbooks by artist Rembrandt Peale. The first volume contains pencil sketches made on a trip on the Hudson River, October 1850, including views of the Palisades, Castle Garden, and the Catskill Mountains.

A published first edition, 1837, of Jean Baptiste Gaspard Roux de Rochelle's History of the United States of America, in French, with a companion volume of original sketches used for the 96 engraved plates. Sketches are of American scenes and history, some apparently original, others after de Bry and other artists, all used in Roux de rochelle's book.

These are the original sketches used for the engravings in Day's 1843 publication, "Historical Collections of the State of Pennsylvania" (Philadelphia). They are finely detailed renderings of public and private structures and landscape throughout Pennsylvania. Accompanying these sketches are 150 pages of photocopied letters of Day, from originals at Yale University. These were used by Smith in his book.

The Peale family is best known as a family of artists; however, family interests and activities were much more wide-ranging. The best known Peale is Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827, APS 1786), who produced more than one thousand paintings, including hundreds of portraits of leading Americans during the colonial and early national periods. Peale was married three times, to Rachel Brewster (1744-1790), Elizabeth de Peyster (1765-1804), and Hannah More (1755-1821). He had eighteen children, eleven of whom reached adulthood. Three of Charles Willson Peale's sons became artists: Raphaelle Peale (1774-1825), Rembrandt Peale (1778-1860), and Rubens Peale (1784-1865). A fourth son, Titian Ramsay Peale (1799-1885, APS 1833), was a naturalist (who made drawings on the exploring expeditions he accompanied) and pioneer in photography, and another son, Benjamin Franklin Peale (1795-1870), became a naturalist and paleontologist. Peale's daughter Sophonisba Angusciola was married to Coleman Sellers (1781-1834), an inventor and manufacturer of machinery, including locomotives. Two of their sons, George Escol Sellers (1808-1899) and Coleman Sellers (1827-1907, APS 1872), were inventors and engineers. The latter served as director of the construction of the hydro-electric power development at Niagara Falls. He was married to Cornelia Wells Sellers (1831-1909). One of their grandsons was Charles Coleman Sellers (1903-1980, APS 1979), a librarian and historian and the author of several studies of the Peale family, including a Charles Willson Peale biography.

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.

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.

After a brief career in the Congregational church, J. Peter Lesley (1819-1903) left the ministry in 1852 to work full-time as a geologist. Having gained experience in structural geology and stratigraphy with the First Pennsylvania Geological Survey (1836-1842), Lesley became an expert in the geology of coal, working for the Pennsylvania Railroad and other corporations and conducting some of the first systematic studies of the state's hydrocarbon resources. A long-time professor at the University of Pennsylvania, he was elected to the APS in 1856, serving variously as its librarian, secretary, and vice president, and he was selected as Director of the Second Pennsylvania Geological Survey (1875-1889). The Lesley Papers include letters to and from Peter Lesley and his wife, Susan on geology, coal and iron mining, abolition, educational reform, organized charity, and Unitarianism. The collection offers important insight into academic and applied geology in late 19th century Pennsylvania, the development of the coal and iron industries, as well as into the Lesleys' progressive social and intellectual milieu. It is divided into three series: Lesley's general correspondence, his correspondence with his brother Joseph, and microfilms of Lesley's research notes.