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1.Title:  Fox Family Journals (1785, 1790, 1883)
 Dates:  1785 - 1884 
 Extent:  3 volumes  
 Locations:  Biarritz | Dover | Dresden | Florence | Genoa | London | Liverpool | Marseille | Monte Carlo | Naples | Nice | Paris | Pisa | Rome | Turin | Venice 
 Abstract:  The Fox Family Papers include three quite dissimilar journals spanning generations of the Fox family. The first two volumes are from the late-eighteenth century (1785 and 1790) and both appear to have been maintained by George Fox, a prominent Philadelphia doctor and close friend of William Temple Franklin. The first journal features some entries from 1785, though few are sequential. Fox records both a transatlantic voyage (6/25/1785) and and various trips throughout continental Europe later that fall. This volume might be better described as a commonplace book than a journal, with numerous quotations, historical notes, and data, including at least one note about Buffon, written in French. A second volume, also presumably recorded by George Fox, contains accounts from the year 1790. Finally, a descendent, Sara Fox, furnishes a European travel diary from nearly one-hundred years later. That volume recounts Fox's sightseeing in England, France, Germany and Italy between 1883-1884. These volumes may interest scholars researching the Fox family, transatlantic travel in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and women's history. 
    
 
    
The Fox Family Papers include three quite dissimilar journals spanning generations of the Fox family. The first two volumes are from the late-eighteenth century (1785 and 1790) and both appear to have been maintained by George Fox, a prominent Philadelphia doctor and close friend of William Temple Franklin. The first journal features some entries from 1785, though few are sequential. Fox records both a transatlantic voyage (6/25/1785) and and various trips throughout continental Europe later that fall. This volume might be better described as a commonplace book than a journal, with numerous quotations, historical notes, and data, including at least one note about Buffon, written in French. A second volume, also presumably recorded by George Fox, contains accounts from the year 1790. Finally, a descendent, Sara Fox, furnishes a European travel diary from nearly one-hundred years later. That volume recounts Fox's sightseeing in England, France, Germany and Italy between 1883-1884. These volumes may interest scholars researching the Fox family, transatlantic travel in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and women's history.
 
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 Subjects:  Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc, comte de, 1707-1788. | Commonplace books. | Diaries. | Europe. | Philadelphia history | Travel. | Women--History. 
 Collection:  Fox Family papers, ca. 1690-1915  (Mss.B.F832f)  
  Go to the collection
 
2.Title:  John Lyon Botanical Journal (1799-1814)
 Dates:  1799 - 1814 
 Extent:  1 volume  
 Locations:  Asheville | Athens | Augusta | Baltimore | Chambersburg | Charleston | Dublin | Elizabeth | Georgetown | Gettysburg | Hanover | Knoxville | Lancaster | Lexington | Liverpool | London | Louisville | Morganton | Nashville | New York | Newport | Philadelphia | Pittsburgh | Richmond | Roanoke | Savannah | Strasburg | Washington D.C. 
 Abstract:  John Lyon's botany journal offers a record of travels in the eastern U.S. at the turn of nineteenth century. The volume includes memoranda dated 1799, with entries spanning 9/6/1802-8/6/1814. Lyon's entries document expenses—plants purchased and collected—with occasional notes about the places and peoples he encounters. Entries related to his travels in the eastern and southeastern U.S. record a visit to plantations (4/23/1803), an Indian settlement in Georgia (7/19/1803), and medical treatments for palsy, jaundice, and cancer (12/1/1808). Notably, Lyon discusses an albino slave in Athens, Georgia, as excerpted in Selected Quotations (9/25/1804). In the spring of 1806, he records travel to Dublin, Liverpool, and London. Thus, while the Lyon journal will certainly appeal to researchers exploring nineteenth century botany, they also feature content with wider appeal, such as U.S. slavery, transatlantic travel, indigenous trade, and antebellum medicine. 
    
 
    
John Lyon's botany journal offers a record of travels in the eastern U.S. at the turn of nineteenth century. The volume includes memoranda dated 1799, with entries spanning 9/6/1802-8/6/1814. Lyon's entries document expenses—plants purchased and collected—with occasional notes about the places and peoples he encounters. Entries related to his travels in the eastern and southeastern U.S. record a visit to plantations (4/23/1803), an Indian settlement in Georgia (7/19/1803), and medical treatments for palsy, jaundice, and cancer (12/1/1808). Notably, Lyon discusses an albino slave in Athens, Georgia, as excerpted in Selected Quotations (9/25/1804). In the spring of 1806, he records travel to Dublin, Liverpool, and London. Thus, while the Lyon journal will certainly appeal to researchers exploring nineteenth century botany, they also feature content with wider appeal, such as U.S. slavery, transatlantic travel, indigenous trade, and antebellum medicine.
 
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  Selected Quotations
  • Memoranda: "In the month of November this year took a Journey to the Pennsylvania Mountains in search of the oil nut" (dated 1799)

  • Albino slave in Athens: "Proceeded onto Athens 35 miles. Here I saw a perfectly white negro boy, his features exactly that of the negro, his hair short wholly and white, his eyes of light blue and very weak, sees better in the night then in the day, seems of a delicate, weakly constitution, his parents both full blacks" (9/25/1804)

  • Cherokee contact: "Got on by South-West Point where I saw Colonel [Megu?] Agent for the Cherokee Nation" (5/17/1807)
 
 Subjects:  Botany. | Cherokee Indians. | Diaries. | Europe. | Medicine. | Native America | Natural history. | Slavery. | Travel. | United States--Civilization--1783-1865. 
 Collection:  Botanical journal, 1799-1814  (Mss.580.L99)  
  Go to the collection
 
3.Title:  Richard Harlan Journals (1816-1817, 1833)
 Dates:  1816 - 1833 
 Extent:  2 volumes  
 Locations:  Belfast | Bologna | Brighton | Calcutta | Cambridge | Dublin | Edinburgh | Florence | Geneva | Genoa | Glasgow | Kalpi | Le Havre | Liverpool | London | Lyon | Milan | Mont Blanc | Mount Vesuvius | Naples | New York | Paris | Parma | Philadelphia | Rome 
 Abstract:  A pair of travel journals maintained by Richard Harlan, a prominent Philadelphia-based scientist and doctor, offer insights into India in the early-nineteenth century and European medicine in the antebellum period. The first journal (1816-17) recounts Harlan's went to India as ship's surgeon of the East India Company. Entries include Harlan's extensive reflections upon—and judgements of—indigenous peoples' customs, burial rights, and religious practices. The second volume (1833) documents a trip Harlan takes to Europe at the apex of his career. That journal offers a window in antebellum medical practices in Europe, including the field of phrenology and Harlan's justification for U.S. slavery. Both volumes are remarkable for their detail and sense of voice, and they will certainly interest scholars researching British colonialism in India, European medical science, and slavery in the antebellum United States. 
    
The Harlan journals recount two of three overseas voyages he took in his career. The first documents a trip to India that he made as a medical student in 1816-1817. This volume offers detailed accounts of the sea voyage (with some locational coordinates and accounts of weather) and accounts of Indian towns and cities, including Calcutta (3/9/1817). Alongside descriptions of Indian hospitals (e.g. 3/21/1817) and botanical gardens (3/23/1817), Harlan also writes at length about the indigenous peoples, including their shrines (4/10/1817), burial rights (6/17/1817), and what he considers their "lamentable" need for Christianity influence (4/11/1817). Harlan's accounts often feature an uncommon sense of voice, inflected with a deep colonialist bias. For example, in one of his later entries, he describes India as a place of fanaticism, war, and declension: "But India, once the seat of Literature and Science, hath at length dwindled into the most inordinate fanaticism, which binds the inhabitants in the grossest ignorance…since the year 1000, India has presented nothing but war and bloodshed. Her cities reduced to ashes, her fields laid waste by hosts of conquering armies, having been successfully overrun by the Mahomedan Princes" (6/17/1817).
 
Harlan's second journal finds him at the apogee of his career as a physician and scientist. Seeking to advance his scientific reputation among his peers, Harlan took a tour of Europe in 1833, extending his professional network of naturalists and medical researchers in the continent's cultural and economic capitals. In addition to visits to the northern European metropolises of Liverpool, London, Cambridge, Dublin, and Paris, he travels south to Bologna and even ascends Mount Vesuvius (9/26/1833). Notably, before he returns to New York, Harlan attends at least one meeting of the Phrenological Society in London (10/29/1833) and participates in a debate about U.S. slavery (6/21/1833), excerpted in Selected Quotations.
 
    
A pair of travel journals maintained by Richard Harlan, a prominent Philadelphia-based scientist and doctor, offer insights into India in the early-nineteenth century and European medicine in the antebellum period. The first journal (1816-17) recounts Harlan's went to India as ship's surgeon of the East India Company. Entries include Harlan's extensive reflections upon—and judgements of—indigenous peoples' customs, burial rights, and religious practices. The second volume (1833) documents a trip Harlan takes to Europe at the apex of his career. That journal offers a window in antebellum medical practices in Europe, including the field of phrenology and Harlan's justification for U.S. slavery. Both volumes are remarkable for their detail and sense of voice, and they will certainly interest scholars researching British colonialism in India, European medical science, and slavery in the antebellum United States.
 
The Harlan journals recount two of three overseas voyages he took in his career. The first documents a trip to India that he made as a medical student in 1816-1817. This volume offers detailed accounts of the sea voyage (with some locational coordinates and accounts of weather) and accounts of Indian towns and cities, including Calcutta (3/9/1817). Alongside descriptions of Indian hospitals (e.g. 3/21/1817) and botanical gardens (3/23/1817), Harlan also writes at length about the indigenous peoples, including their shrines (4/10/1817), burial rights (6/17/1817), and what he considers their "lamentable" need for Christianity influence (4/11/1817). Harlan's accounts often feature an uncommon sense of voice, inflected with a deep colonialist bias. For example, in one of his later entries, he describes India as a place of fanaticism, war, and declension: "But India, once the seat of Literature and Science, hath at length dwindled into the most inordinate fanaticism, which binds the inhabitants in the grossest ignorance…since the year 1000, India has presented nothing but war and bloodshed. Her cities reduced to ashes, her fields laid waste by hosts of conquering armies, having been successfully overrun by the Mahomedan Princes" (6/17/1817).
 
Harlan's second journal finds him at the apogee of his career as a physician and scientist. Seeking to advance his scientific reputation among his peers, Harlan took a tour of Europe in 1833, extending his professional network of naturalists and medical researchers in the continent's cultural and economic capitals. In addition to visits to the northern European metropolises of Liverpool, London, Cambridge, Dublin, and Paris, he travels south to Bologna and even ascends Mount Vesuvius (9/26/1833). Notably, before he returns to New York, Harlan attends at least one meeting of the Phrenological Society in London (10/29/1833) and participates in a debate about U.S. slavery (6/21/1833), excerpted in Selected Quotations.
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  Selected Quotations
  • "As you approach Calcutta, the shores are beautified with country-seats, or Bungalows, as they are here called, belonging to some of the residents. The houses of which are superbly elegant. Six or eight miles below the city is the Companies Botanic Garden, on the right bank of the River" (3/9/1817)

  • "We cannot but lament that awful obscurity of ignorance, which withholds from them that 'light which shineth in darkness,' those mild and elegant doctrines contained in the sacred writings. But it might be supposed that minds so little elevated, and expanded above that of brutes, utterly incapable of conceiving such sublime doctrines. However, time and long intercourse with Europeans may eventually do away these barbarous customs

  • at least I have no doubt, but that futurity will see them converted to Christian Faith" (4/11/1817)

  • "Mr. Shields has rather a more intellectual [as frontis] than has Mr. C. Connell

  • but the latter has a far more commanding stature:--his eye is too small for beauty, with somewhat the expression of that of the Elephant-He attacked me on the subject of my Country's Slavery-after having occupied some time on the subject next his heart-the sufferings of poor Ireland-I maintained the intellectual superiority of the white races of mankind, which he opposing, led to long arguments &c (6/21/1833)
 
 Subjects:  Asia. | Colonialisms | Diaries. | East India Company. | Europe. | Indigenous people. | Medicine. | Phrenology. | Religion. | Science. | Seafaring life. | Slavery. | Travel. | Weather. 
 Collection:  Richard Harlan Journals  (Mss.B.H228)  
  Go to the collection
 
4.Title:  Elisha Kent Kane Papers & Kane Ship Logs (1836-1855)
 Dates:  1836 - 1855 
 Extent:  50 volumes  
 Locations:  Baltimore | Bombay | Boston | Hong Kong | New York | Philadelphia | Rio de Janeiro | San Francisco | Washington D.C. | Amsterdam | Barbados | Bermuda | Callao | Camden | Charleston | Chincha Islands | Cienfuegos | Colombo | Demerara | Havana | Havre de Grace | Liverpool | Luxor | Macau | Manila | Melbourne | Mobile | New Orleans | Norfolk | Norwich | Pensacola | Richmond | Savannah | Tabasco | Tahiti | Tarrytown | Valparaiso | Tampico | Veracruz | Wilmington 
 Abstract:  The Elisha Kent Kane Papers and Logbooks include at least 50 heterogeneous notebooks, journals, and logs that may be loosely termed diaries and clustered into four main categories: Kane's arctic expeditions (containing six notebooks); his world travel (eight notebooks); his education, training, and medical practice (24 notebooks); and the various ship logs contained in the Kane Ship Log collection (12 notebooks). Although some of these records are difficult to interpret in isolation, when read together in these suggestive clusters, they will richly reward scholars interested in trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific travel, antebellum medicine, colonialism, and ethnography. Reference F. A. Parker's "Log of the U.S. Frigate Brandywine" (Kane Logbooks, No.7) and Samuel L. Breeze's "Journal of the U.S. Sloop of War Albany" (Kane Logbooks, No.8) for detailed illustrations of antebellum Rio de Janeiro, Macao, Hong Kong, Honolulu, Valparaiso, Veracruz, and the Yucatan. 
    
 
    
The Elisha Kent Kane Papers and Logbooks include at least 50 heterogeneous notebooks, journals, and logs that may be loosely termed diaries and clustered into four main categories: Kane's arctic expeditions (containing six notebooks); his world travel (eight notebooks); his education, training, and medical practice (24 notebooks); and the various ship logs contained in the Kane Ship Log collection (12 notebooks). Although some of these records are difficult to interpret in isolation, when read together in these suggestive clusters, they will richly reward scholars interested in trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific travel, antebellum medicine, colonialism, and ethnography. Reference F. A. Parker's "Log of the U.S. Frigate Brandywine" (Kane Logbooks, No.7) and Samuel L. Breeze's "Journal of the U.S. Sloop of War Albany" (Kane Logbooks, No.8) for detailed illustrations of antebellum Rio de Janeiro, Macao, Hong Kong, Honolulu, Valparaiso, Veracruz, and the Yucatan.
 
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 Subjects:  Africa. | Arctic Missions | Australia. | Central America. | Colonialisms | Diaries. | Egyptology. | Ethnography and education | Expedition | Europe. | Medicine. | Middle East. | South America. | Travel. 
 Collection:  Elisha Kent Kane Papers  (Mss.B.K132)  
  Go to the collection
 
5.Title:  John Pershouse Journal (1800-1838)
 Dates:  1800 - 1838 
 Extent:  1 volume  
 Locations:  Baltimore | Belfast | Bergen | Birmingham | Bologna | Bordeaux | Boston | Brighton | Brussels | Buffalo | Canterbury | Carlisle | Chirk | Cincinnati | Darmstadt | Dieppe | Dover | Dublin | Edinburgh | Exeter | Frankfurt | Glasgow | Havre de Grace | Heidelberg | Huntsville | Kehl | Lewistown | Liverpool | Lockport | London | Louisville | Manchester | Nashville | New York | Niagara Falls | Paris | Philadelphia | Plymouth | Portsmouth | Southampton | Tuscaloosa | Washington D.C. | Wheeling | Worcester, United Kingdom 
 Abstract:  The John Pershouse papers contain two volumes of genealogical data from the late-eighteenth century, two letter books thought to belong to his nephew (Henry Pershouse), and one travel journal. The journal is noteworthy because it furnishes accounts of transatlantic travel in the early national period. While the first entry notes Pershouse's departure from Liverpool to Boston on a 56-day voyage (2/1/1800), regular entries begin around 1826 and continue to late-1838. As a Philadelphia merchant, Pershouse regularly records distances, accounts, and sights in Europe and the United States. Notably, he travels on a ship under the command of a Captain Matlack (presumably Timothy Matlack), travels extensively in the U.S. Southeast and Midwest, and notes the outbreak of the Belgian Revolution in 1830—all excerpted in Selected Quotations. Researchers interested in U.S. domestic and transatlantic travel during the antebellum period ought to find this volume particularly useful. 
    
 
    
The John Pershouse papers contain two volumes of genealogical data from the late-eighteenth century, two letter books thought to belong to his nephew (Henry Pershouse), and one travel journal. The journal is noteworthy because it furnishes accounts of transatlantic travel in the early national period. While the first entry notes Pershouse's departure from Liverpool to Boston on a 56-day voyage (2/1/1800), regular entries begin around 1826 and continue to late-1838. As a Philadelphia merchant, Pershouse regularly records distances, accounts, and sights in Europe and the United States. Notably, he travels on a ship under the command of a Captain Matlack (presumably Timothy Matlack), travels extensively in the U.S. Southeast and Midwest, and notes the outbreak of the Belgian Revolution in 1830—all excerpted in Selected Quotations. Researchers interested in U.S. domestic and transatlantic travel during the antebellum period ought to find this volume particularly useful.
 
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  Selected Quotations
  • "Embark'd in the Ship Atlantic Capt. Matlack at New York paying for passage, bedding, & liquors included $210 or £47.50. Arriv'd at Liv.l 31 Octr after rather a boisterous passage of 31 days" (9/30/1818)

  • "Oct 30 to 12 Jany 1825 in the Western States…The above journeys were in the States of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana" (10/30/1824-1/12/1825)

  • "It appears that on the 25 Augst 4 days after I had left it a revolution broke out at Brussels" (8/25/1830)
 
 Subjects:  Accounts. | Diaries. | Diplomacy. | Europe. | Matlack, Timothy, 1736-1829. | Seafaring life. | Travel. | United States--Civilization--1783-1865. | United States--Politics and government--1783-1865. 
 Collection:  John Pershouse correspondence and papers, 1749-1899  (Mss.B.H228)  
  Go to the collection
 
6.Title:  Richard Beck Journal (1880)
 Dates:  1880 - 1880 
 Extent:  1 volume  
 Locations:  Albany | Alexandria | Atlantic City | Boston | Buffalo | Carson City | Cheyenne | Chicago | Cincinnati | Cleveland | Colorado Springs | Council Bluffs | Kansas City | Leadville | Liverpool | Montreal | Monument | New York | Newport | Niagara Falls | Oakland | Ogden | Philadelphia | Piedmont | Pueblo | Quebec City | Reno | Sacramento | Saint Louis | Salt Lake City | San Francisco | Santa Barbara | Topeka | Toronto | Trenton | Virginia City | Washington D.C. | Yosemite Valley 
 Abstract:  In his detailed journal of a trip to America in the late-nineteenth century (1880), English Quaker Richard Beck offers comments on Philadelphia society and its institutions, as well as a record of his travels around America, particularly by rail. Along the way, he crosses paths with naturalist Titian Peale and artist Henry Ulke. This volume is noteworthy in two regards. First, it contains a wealth of memorabilia, including advertisements, photographs, playbills, menus, as well as Beck's own original pencil and watercolor sketches. Second, it features thoughtful and often comparative assessments of the people and places he visits. In fact, no detail can escape Beck's attentive eye. Alongside descriptions of Colorado rock formations (4/30/1880), Yosemite redwoods (6/2/1880) and the development of Salt Lake City (5/15/1880), Beck intersperses comments on American hairstyles (2/27/1880), eyeglasses (3/2/1880), libraries (4/20/1880), and that great American pastime, baseball (7/8/1880). This volume may interest scholars of postbellum material culture, late-nineteenth century Philadelphia, and the American West. 
    
 
    
In his detailed journal of a trip to America in the late-nineteenth century (1880), English Quaker Richard Beck offers comments on Philadelphia society and its institutions, as well as a record of his travels around America, particularly by rail. Along the way, he crosses paths with naturalist Titian Peale and artist Henry Ulke. This volume is noteworthy in two regards. First, it contains a wealth of memorabilia, including advertisements, photographs, playbills, menus, as well as Beck's own original pencil and watercolor sketches. Second, it features thoughtful and often comparative assessments of the people and places he visits. In fact, no detail can escape Beck's attentive eye. Alongside descriptions of Colorado rock formations (4/30/1880), Yosemite redwoods (6/2/1880) and the development of Salt Lake City (5/15/1880), Beck intersperses comments on American hairstyles (2/27/1880), eyeglasses (3/2/1880), libraries (4/20/1880), and that great American pastime, baseball (7/8/1880). This volume may interest scholars of postbellum material culture, late-nineteenth century Philadelphia, and the American West.
 
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  Selected Quotations
  • "The American ladies I do not admire. They all 'bang' their hair over their foreheads, frizzle it, or plaster it down in rings on their foreheads. If the hair is frizzled & does not lie well, so a net of hair is put over to keep it down so it shall not fly about. If it was natural it would be all right but being purely artificial it is horrid. If Americans can do anything unlike the English they will" (2/27/1880)

  • "At store all day long…We are greatly in need of the nosepieces. Am getting a little into American ways--but there is such a lot for me to harm in the business that I hardly know which way to turn" (3/2/1880)

  • "Americans are great on libraries--every large town has one" (4/20/1880)
 
 Subjects:  American Western Life | British--United States. | Diaries. | Entomology. | Ephemera. | Railroad | Religion. | Science. | Society of Friends. | Travel. | United States--Civilization--1865-1918. | Urban planning and environment | Weather. 
 Collection:  Richard Beck journal. February 13, 1880 - October 1, 1880  (Mss.917.B38)  
  Go to the collection
 
7.Title:  Amelia Smith Calvert Diaries (1912, 1929)
 Dates:  1912 - 1919 
 Extent:  2 volumes  
 Locations:  Amsterdam | Antwerp | Basel | Bellagio | Bolzano | Brussels | Bruges | Cambridge | Canterbury | Carlisle | Cologne | Como | Cortina | Dawlish | Delft | Durham | Edinburgh | Ely | Eton | Exeter | Freiburg | Geneva | Genoa | Ghent | Glastonbury | Gloucester | The Hague | Heidelberg | Innsbruck | Interlaken | Kenilworth | Keswick | Koblenz | Lincoln | Liverpool | London | Lucerne | Lugano | Mainz | Melrose | Milan | Montreux | Namur | New York | Oban | Oberhausen | Oxford | Padua | Perth | Philadelphia | Plymouth | Rotterdam | Salisbury | Schaffhausen | Stratford | Venice | Verona | Wells | Windermere | Windsor | York | Zermatt 
 Abstract:  Amelia Smith Calvert maintained two journals of European trips taken in the summer of 1912 and 1929. Although both trips appear to coincide with scientific conferences, Calvert dedicates most of her entries to enthusiastic observations of sightseeing in the United Kingdom, Holland, Belgium, Germany, and Italy. These volumes may interest researchers exploring early-twentieth-century science and European travel. 
    
The first journal, "Diary of a Trip to England & Scotland in the Summer of 1912" documents a three-month trip (6/22-9/23) that Amelia and Philip Calvert took while attending the Second International Congress of Entomology. Given the numerous references to "P," it appears that Amelia maintained most if not all of this volume. The journal is remarkable for its variety of modes of transportation: the narrative begins with the transatlantic voyage from Philadelphia to Liverpool aboard a steamer (the S.S. Merion), and includes transport by sailboat, rail, carriage, auto, and funicular. Calvert also furnishes numerous descriptions of European towns and cities, architecture, people, dress, history, weather, and sightseeing of religious and cultural institutions. Notably, the journal includes occasional illustrations and ephemera such as advertisements, receipts, bills, and even a peacock feather (280).
 
The second journal, "Diary of Trip to Europe 1929" follows much the same structure. Once again, it provides an account of a several months travel (7/12-10/2) associated with work, this time a visit to the Zoologists Institute at Freiburg. The couple travels from New York to Antwerp by steamer (the S.S. Lapland). Alongside notes concerning sightseeing—and illustrations and ephemera—Calvert furnishes some comparative observations that might interest twentieth century historians. For example, she writes, "While there are many automobiles and trucks on the streets of Brussels, there is not yet the density of traffic to be seen in Philadelphia" (7/23/1929).
 
    
Amelia Smith Calvert maintained two journals of European trips taken in the summer of 1912 and 1929. Although both trips appear to coincide with scientific conferences, Calvert dedicates most of her entries to enthusiastic observations of sightseeing in the United Kingdom, Holland, Belgium, Germany, and Italy. These volumes may interest researchers exploring early-twentieth-century science and European travel.
 
The first journal, "Diary of a Trip to England & Scotland in the Summer of 1912" documents a three-month trip (6/22-9/23) that Amelia and Philip Calvert took while attending the Second International Congress of Entomology. Given the numerous references to "P," it appears that Amelia maintained most if not all of this volume. The journal is remarkable for its variety of modes of transportation: the narrative begins with the transatlantic voyage from Philadelphia to Liverpool aboard a steamer (the S.S. Merion), and includes transport by sailboat, rail, carriage, auto, and funicular. Calvert also furnishes numerous descriptions of European towns and cities, architecture, people, dress, history, weather, and sightseeing of religious and cultural institutions. Notably, the journal includes occasional illustrations and ephemera such as advertisements, receipts, bills, and even a peacock feather (280).
 
The second journal, "Diary of Trip to Europe 1929" follows much the same structure. Once again, it provides an account of a several months travel (7/12-10/2) associated with work, this time a visit to the Zoologists Institute at Freiburg. The couple travels from New York to Antwerp by steamer (the S.S. Lapland). Alongside notes concerning sightseeing—and illustrations and ephemera—Calvert furnishes some comparative observations that might interest twentieth century historians. For example, she writes, "While there are many automobiles and trucks on the streets of Brussels, there is not yet the density of traffic to be seen in Philadelphia" (7/23/1929).
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  Selected Quotations
  • "While there are many automobiles and trucks on the streets of Brussels, there is not yet the density of traffic to be seen in Philadelphia" (7/23/1929)
 
 Subjects:  Diaries. | Entomology. | Europe. | Science. | Travel. | Weather. | Women--History. | Zoology. 
 Collection:  Amelia Smith Calvert diaries, 1912-1929  (Mss.B.C13)  
  Go to the collection
 
8.Title:  Charles Benedict Davenport Diaries (1878-1944)
 Dates:  1878 - 1944 
 Extent:  95 volumes  
 Locations:  Amsterdam | Boston | Chicago | London | New York | Paris | Philadelphia | Rome | Vienna | Washington D.C. | Arlington | Atlantic City | Bolzano | Bergen | Bermuda | Biloxi | Bloomington | Brunn | Brussels | Cambridge | Carlisle | Charlottesville | Cheyenne | Cincinnati | Cold Spring Harbor | Columbus | Copenhagen | Dallas | Drobak | Durham | Fairfax | Grand Canyon | Halifax | Huntington | Indianapolis | Ithaca | Jacksonville | Kansas City | Koblenz | Lewes | Lexington | Liverpool | Louisville | Lucania | Mesa Verde | Mexico City | Miami | Minneapolis | Minneola | Montreal | Munich | Naples | Newark | New Haven | New Rochelle | Newport | New Canaan | Oslo | Oyster Bay | Pittsburg | Quebec | Raleigh | Rapid City | Rheims | Richmond | Rochester | San Juan | Santiago de Cuba | Savannah | Southampton | Stamford | Strasbourg | Stuttgart | St. Louis | St. Paul | Stockholm | Sydney | Syosset | Trondheim | Uppsala | Utrecht | White Yellowstone National Park | Yucata | Zion National Park | Zurich 
 Abstract:  The Charles Benedict Davenport Papers include 95 diaries—and numerous ancillary materials—spanning 66 years (1878-1944). In fact, the collection traverses Davenport's formative years and adult life, beginning with student notebooks that he maintained at the age of 12 to a five-year diary that culminates with an entry recorded less than two weeks before his death (dated 2/5/1944). Davenport's diaries contain a wealth of material valuable to researchers investigating his personal life, scientific research—especially the field of Eugenics—religion (Congregationalism), politics, and World War II. At least one diary, which spans 4/1/1905 to 3/16/1913, appears to have been maintained by his wife, Gertrude. 
    
Davenport employed a host of different types of notebooks to record entries. Those include: Standard Diary, A Line a Day, Red Star Diary, Nassau Diary, Loesen Engagement Book, Daily Reminder, Vaughan's, New Census, Marquette, and various loosely bound notebooks. While he records weather conditions (often with temperatures), meetings, and accounts throughout those records, his earliest accounts proffer his most personal and narrative entries.
 
Between 1878-84, Davenport writes regularly about his religious upbringing, studies, work at the Polytechnic Institute, and political observations. Religion features prominently in Davenport's youth: In addition to regularly attending church and Sunday School, he records notes and thoughts about particular readings and sermons (consider for example 1/6/1878, 1/29/1882, and 2/16/1882). In a 1/22/1882 entry, he even notes the visit of a Mormon woman from Utah, which he later marks as a "principal personal event."
 
Alongside notes about subjects related to studies, Davenport records household chores (7/16/1881), recreational activities (walks, rides, croquet), trips (e.g. a summer visit to the New Hampshire White Mountains in 1884), cultural excursions (the American Museum of Natural History on 1/6/1879), personal readings (1/3/1881), and some of the first evidence of his interest in surveying (illustrations of a chapel hall, 1/2/1880). The young Davenport also demonstrated an unusual curiosity in current affairs and politics. For example, his first journal includes an enthusiastic account of election day (11/5-11/6/1878), and his 1881 diary features several entries dedicated to assassination of President James Garfield and ascension of Chester A. Arthur (9/26-9/30/1881). These early diaries are also some of Davenport's most playful: he self-consciously reflects on diary-writing (2/6-2/7/1878, 1878 memoranda, 1880 front matter, and 9/6/1880) and intersperses doodles to commemorate holidays (12/311878 and 2/22/1879, 5/30/1879, 6/1/1879).
 
Subsequent diaries are less narrative in nature, but illuminating their own right. Davenport maintains notebooks on subject area interests, including a journal entitled "Ornithology 1885" which includes migration charts from the American Ornithologists' Union," notebooks dedicated to topology, mineralogy, budding and regeneration, and research on the human brain (1885-1892), and various notebooks dedicated to the study of human inheritance. As Davenport's career begins to take off around the fin de siecle, he includes more notes related to lectures, seminars, student meetings, dinners, and lab work. His marriage to Gertrude Crotty surfaces in the five-year diary spanning 1899-1905 via birthday reminders (2/28/1899), city outings (9/11/1900), and notes related to their child, Janet (1/2/1899).
 
Researchers will find that Davenport's early-twentieth century diaries provide insights into his burgeoning career in genetics. In addition to notebooks pertaining to expeditions to the Biloxi, Mississippi (March 1901), Europe (September-October 1902 and 1909-10), and Mt. Washington (August 1908), a 1903 notebook features notes on "Topics of Inheritance" and allusions to work on a laboratory—almost certainly his Carnegie-funded lab in Cold Spring Harbor. Nevertheless, many of his entries could easily be confused with those of a farmer: Davenport records notes to purchase chicken feed, coal, grain, and rat poison, and a 1909-10 diary features numerous and meticulous illustrations of fish (October 1909 – March 1910). Concurrently, Davenport notes numerous meetings with leaders in genetics, botany, and zoology, including George Harrison Shull, Herbert Spencer Jennings, Edward Bagnall Poulton, Albert Francis Blakeslee, and Edmund Beecher Wilson. Perhaps most significantly, beginning around 1911, Davenport starts to reference Mary Harriman, who would later fund his work in eugenics.
 
Eugenics surface most directly in Davenport's diaries maintained throughout the 1910s and 1920s. Alongside regular visits to the "Harriman House," Davenport notes the opening of his laboratory ("Bio Lab Opens," 6/26/1912) and his increasing commitments to the field of eugenics. That includes notes on "Dwarfs of Lamar Lamar" (11/14/1911), reminders of "families to study (e.g. "chemists," "artists," "statesmen," "vocalists," and "naval" in his 1913 memoranda), and an account of "negative" and "positive eugenics" (January 1920). One notebook (dated "February 12") is less a diary than a set of eugenics lecture notes, including a "Field worker's guide" that describes the consequences of segregation, limitations of the law of heredity, and pages allocated for recording hair color, skin color, stature, mental activity, feeble-mindedness (e.g. pauperism, crime, insanity, criminality).
 
Between 1914-1930, Davenport makes numerous trips to Europe to study eugenics (including (1914, 1922, and 1929). His 1914 trip is explicitly labeled "Eugenics in Holland" (10/22). A series of loose, typed pages entitled "Diary of Trip to Europe, September 13 to October 31, 1922," includes notes on a lecture entitled "Das Mutations Problem" in Vienna (9/25) and his participation in the Second Commission of Eugenics through which he "Voted to admit Germany and all other, properly qualified countries to the Commission" (10/9). Perhaps most remarkably, at the end of that trip, Davenport records a meeting with Charles Darwin's son, Leonard: "At Lewes was met by Darwin and taken to his home in Sussex. Private conference on eugenical matters" (10/20).
 
That engagement carries home, where, in a 1930 diary, he includes a series of relevant newspaper clippings: "Racial related to a Racial Integrity Bill Signed" in Richmond, Virginia (3/14), "Extols African Marriage" (3/4), "Senate Refuses to Shelve Harris Quota Bill: Senate Again Rejects Motion by Glass aimed at Salvaging National origins Clause" (4/24), and "Dr. Adler Closes Psychology Clinic: Noted Viennese Scientist Declared Target of Medical Center Critics" (5/31). In some loose pages associated with that diary, Davenport compares a colleague (simply identified as "Gordon") to the Croatian-American geneticist Milislav Demerec: While Davenport finds Gordon "industrious and fertile in ideas," he adds that he is "not so brilliant as Demerec" (6/3).
 
Davenport's remaining diaries (1931-1944) mostly focus on various trips, with occasional mentions of the outbreak of World War II. The early-1930s feature a series of notebooks dedicated to travel in the Americas, including a "Western Trip" and "Trip to the West by Automobile" (which collectively span July-October 1931), as well as trips to Bermuda, Mexico, and Nova Scotia. The Nova Scotia trip is noteworthy because Davenport explicitly notes an encounter with Russian-American geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky. In his late-1930s journals, World War II surfaces, if only briefly. In a diary spanning 1937-39, Davenport notes Germany's seizure of Poland (9/1/1939) and Great Britain's subsequent declaration of war (9/3/1939). Curiously, he also alludes to a "Cox: Atomic Nuclear" in multiple entries of June and July in his 1940 diary.
 
Finally, the Davenport diaries are noteworthy for their idiosyncrasies: these include at least one volume authored by his wife, and the eclectic range of ephemera include inside and alongside the diaries. In a volume signed "G.L. Davenport"—and bearing numerous allusions to "Charles and Charlie throughout—Gertrude Davenport records a series of entries between 4/1/1905 to 3/16/1913. Of particular interest is her protest of race track gambling (4/19/1908 and 4/23/1908) and the dedication to Carnegie Lab, with a note of an encounter with Andrew Carnegie, who "disappointed the department by not adding to the endowment" (1/3/1910). Alongside accounts of various farm and house work (mending garments, cleaning, and, unusual for a homemaker, making concrete blocks), this diary also notes Gertrude's reading, namely Harper's Monthly and the Century.
 
Across the series 95 diaries, Davenport includes a host of rich and sometimes peculiar ephemera: a letter, dated March 20, 1901 enclosed in an 1889 notebook, an image of Robert E. Lee (7/13/1905), a doodle of a family crest (3/17/1910), pamphlets related to ornithology (1920) and major snowstorm (2/2/1930), membership cards for the Arts Center of New York (1925) and the American Museum of Natural History (1943), Davenport's 1922 and 1925 passports, programs for a meeting of the Eugenics Research Association (6/3/1930) and a symposium on "Theory and Development" at Davenport's home (3/21/1930), train tickets to Washington (9/5/1918 and 7/9/1919), the ferry service between Staten Island and Brooklyn (5/3/1925), and the Long Island Railroad schedule (1927), receipts, deposit slips, and scraps of paper labeled everything from "OBESITY" (8/19/1915) to "Committee on Ways and Means" (1917), and even wooden toothpicks, which Davenport appeared to have used as bookmarks (9/5/1918, 10/31/1918, 3/12/1933, and 5/7/1933).
 
Although Davenport rarely uses his diaries for reflection, his enclosure of ancillary materials reveals his personal networks and popular reading. Throughout the diaries, scholars will discover business and calling cards for William Cohill (1902), Edith Reeves (1911), "Brinkerhoff" (1911), Sidney Ball (1914), "Antipodes" (1914), George Laible (1915), H. Lundborg (1923), Charles Herrman (1925), E.J. Lidbetter (1927), Gebruder Dippe (1930), H.J. Parsen (1933), and Ji-Yen Rikamaru (1937). Davenport also regularly encloses snippets from newspapers, including a piece Russian mogul named M. Rachatnikoff who sought "the improvement of the human race" (12/9/1906), Mary Harriman's purchase of land and sheep (9/25/1911), op-eds on immigration policy (9/9/1915) and access to birth control (1920), an obituary for Dwight Comstock (9/16/1932), and reports of Nassau County budget cuts (11/9/1942).
 
    
The Charles Benedict Davenport Papers include 95 diaries—and numerous ancillary materials—spanning 66 years (1878-1944). In fact, the collection traverses Davenport's formative years and adult life, beginning with student notebooks that he maintained at the age of 12 to a five-year diary that culminates with an entry recorded less than two weeks before his death (dated 2/5/1944). Davenport's diaries contain a wealth of material valuable to researchers investigating his personal life, scientific research—especially the field of Eugenics—religion (Congregationalism), politics, and World War II. At least one diary, which spans 4/1/1905 to 3/16/1913, appears to have been maintained by his wife, Gertrude.
 
Davenport employed a host of different types of notebooks to record entries. Those include: Standard Diary, A Line a Day, Red Star Diary, Nassau Diary, Loesen Engagement Book, Daily Reminder, Vaughan's, New Census, Marquette, and various loosely bound notebooks. While he records weather conditions (often with temperatures), meetings, and accounts throughout those records, his earliest accounts proffer his most personal and narrative entries.
 
Between 1878-84, Davenport writes regularly about his religious upbringing, studies, work at the Polytechnic Institute, and political observations. Religion features prominently in Davenport's youth: In addition to regularly attending church and Sunday School, he records notes and thoughts about particular readings and sermons (consider for example 1/6/1878, 1/29/1882, and 2/16/1882). In a 1/22/1882 entry, he even notes the visit of a Mormon woman from Utah, which he later marks as a "principal personal event."
 
Alongside notes about subjects related to studies, Davenport records household chores (7/16/1881), recreational activities (walks, rides, croquet), trips (e.g. a summer visit to the New Hampshire White Mountains in 1884), cultural excursions (the American Museum of Natural History on 1/6/1879), personal readings (1/3/1881), and some of the first evidence of his interest in surveying (illustrations of a chapel hall, 1/2/1880). The young Davenport also demonstrated an unusual curiosity in current affairs and politics. For example, his first journal includes an enthusiastic account of election day (11/5-11/6/1878), and his 1881 diary features several entries dedicated to assassination of President James Garfield and ascension of Chester A. Arthur (9/26-9/30/1881). These early diaries are also some of Davenport's most playful: he self-consciously reflects on diary-writing (2/6-2/7/1878, 1878 memoranda, 1880 front matter, and 9/6/1880) and intersperses doodles to commemorate holidays (12/311878 and 2/22/1879, 5/30/1879, 6/1/1879).
 
Subsequent diaries are less narrative in nature, but illuminating their own right. Davenport maintains notebooks on subject area interests, including a journal entitled "Ornithology 1885" which includes migration charts from the American Ornithologists' Union," notebooks dedicated to topology, mineralogy, budding and regeneration, and research on the human brain (1885-1892), and various notebooks dedicated to the study of human inheritance. As Davenport's career begins to take off around the fin de siecle, he includes more notes related to lectures, seminars, student meetings, dinners, and lab work. His marriage to Gertrude Crotty surfaces in the five-year diary spanning 1899-1905 via birthday reminders (2/28/1899), city outings (9/11/1900), and notes related to their child, Janet (1/2/1899).
 
Researchers will find that Davenport's early-twentieth century diaries provide insights into his burgeoning career in genetics. In addition to notebooks pertaining to expeditions to the Biloxi, Mississippi (March 1901), Europe (September-October 1902 and 1909-10), and Mt. Washington (August 1908), a 1903 notebook features notes on "Topics of Inheritance" and allusions to work on a laboratory—almost certainly his Carnegie-funded lab in Cold Spring Harbor. Nevertheless, many of his entries could easily be confused with those of a farmer: Davenport records notes to purchase chicken feed, coal, grain, and rat poison, and a 1909-10 diary features numerous and meticulous illustrations of fish (October 1909 – March 1910). Concurrently, Davenport notes numerous meetings with leaders in genetics, botany, and zoology, including George Harrison Shull, Herbert Spencer Jennings, Edward Bagnall Poulton, Albert Francis Blakeslee, and Edmund Beecher Wilson. Perhaps most significantly, beginning around 1911, Davenport starts to reference Mary Harriman, who would later fund his work in eugenics.
 
Eugenics surface most directly in Davenport's diaries maintained throughout the 1910s and 1920s. Alongside regular visits to the "Harriman House," Davenport notes the opening of his laboratory ("Bio Lab Opens," 6/26/1912) and his increasing commitments to the field of eugenics. That includes notes on "Dwarfs of Lamar Lamar" (11/14/1911), reminders of "families to study (e.g. "chemists," "artists," "statesmen," "vocalists," and "naval" in his 1913 memoranda), and an account of "negative" and "positive eugenics" (January 1920). One notebook (dated "February 12") is less a diary than a set of eugenics lecture notes, including a "Field worker's guide" that describes the consequences of segregation, limitations of the law of heredity, and pages allocated for recording hair color, skin color, stature, mental activity, feeble-mindedness (e.g. pauperism, crime, insanity, criminality).
 
Between 1914-1930, Davenport makes numerous trips to Europe to study eugenics (including (1914, 1922, and 1929). His 1914 trip is explicitly labeled "Eugenics in Holland" (10/22). A series of loose, typed pages entitled "Diary of Trip to Europe, September 13 to October 31, 1922," includes notes on a lecture entitled "Das Mutations Problem" in Vienna (9/25) and his participation in the Second Commission of Eugenics through which he "Voted to admit Germany and all other, properly qualified countries to the Commission" (10/9). Perhaps most remarkably, at the end of that trip, Davenport records a meeting with Charles Darwin's son, Leonard: "At Lewes was met by Darwin and taken to his home in Sussex. Private conference on eugenical matters" (10/20).
 
That engagement carries home, where, in a 1930 diary, he includes a series of relevant newspaper clippings: "Racial related to a Racial Integrity Bill Signed" in Richmond, Virginia (3/14), "Extols African Marriage" (3/4), "Senate Refuses to Shelve Harris Quota Bill: Senate Again Rejects Motion by Glass aimed at Salvaging National origins Clause" (4/24), and "Dr. Adler Closes Psychology Clinic: Noted Viennese Scientist Declared Target of Medical Center Critics" (5/31). In some loose pages associated with that diary, Davenport compares a colleague (simply identified as "Gordon") to the Croatian-American geneticist Milislav Demerec: While Davenport finds Gordon "industrious and fertile in ideas," he adds that he is "not so brilliant as Demerec" (6/3).
 
Davenport's remaining diaries (1931-1944) mostly focus on various trips, with occasional mentions of the outbreak of World War II. The early-1930s feature a series of notebooks dedicated to travel in the Americas, including a "Western Trip" and "Trip to the West by Automobile" (which collectively span July-October 1931), as well as trips to Bermuda, Mexico, and Nova Scotia. The Nova Scotia trip is noteworthy because Davenport explicitly notes an encounter with Russian-American geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky. In his late-1930s journals, World War II surfaces, if only briefly. In a diary spanning 1937-39, Davenport notes Germany's seizure of Poland (9/1/1939) and Great Britain's subsequent declaration of war (9/3/1939). Curiously, he also alludes to a "Cox: Atomic Nuclear" in multiple entries of June and July in his 1940 diary.
 
Finally, the Davenport diaries are noteworthy for their idiosyncrasies: these include at least one volume authored by his wife, and the eclectic range of ephemera include inside and alongside the diaries. In a volume signed "G.L. Davenport"—and bearing numerous allusions to "Charles and Charlie throughout—Gertrude Davenport records a series of entries between 4/1/1905 to 3/16/1913. Of particular interest is her protest of race track gambling (4/19/1908 and 4/23/1908) and the dedication to Carnegie Lab, with a note of an encounter with Andrew Carnegie, who "disappointed the department by not adding to the endowment" (1/3/1910). Alongside accounts of various farm and house work (mending garments, cleaning, and, unusual for a homemaker, making concrete blocks), this diary also notes Gertrude's reading, namely Harper's Monthly and the Century.
 
Across the series 95 diaries, Davenport includes a host of rich and sometimes peculiar ephemera: a letter, dated March 20, 1901 enclosed in an 1889 notebook, an image of Robert E. Lee (7/13/1905), a doodle of a family crest (3/17/1910), pamphlets related to ornithology (1920) and major snowstorm (2/2/1930), membership cards for the Arts Center of New York (1925) and the American Museum of Natural History (1943), Davenport's 1922 and 1925 passports, programs for a meeting of the Eugenics Research Association (6/3/1930) and a symposium on "Theory and Development" at Davenport's home (3/21/1930), train tickets to Washington (9/5/1918 and 7/9/1919), the ferry service between Staten Island and Brooklyn (5/3/1925), and the Long Island Railroad schedule (1927), receipts, deposit slips, and scraps of paper labeled everything from "OBESITY" (8/19/1915) to "Committee on Ways and Means" (1917), and even wooden toothpicks, which Davenport appeared to have used as bookmarks (9/5/1918, 10/31/1918, 3/12/1933, and 5/7/1933).
 
Although Davenport rarely uses his diaries for reflection, his enclosure of ancillary materials reveals his personal networks and popular reading. Throughout the diaries, scholars will discover business and calling cards for William Cohill (1902), Edith Reeves (1911), "Brinkerhoff" (1911), Sidney Ball (1914), "Antipodes" (1914), George Laible (1915), H. Lundborg (1923), Charles Herrman (1925), E.J. Lidbetter (1927), Gebruder Dippe (1930), H.J. Parsen (1933), and Ji-Yen Rikamaru (1937). Davenport also regularly encloses snippets from newspapers, including a piece Russian mogul named M. Rachatnikoff who sought "the improvement of the human race" (12/9/1906), Mary Harriman's purchase of land and sheep (9/25/1911), op-eds on immigration policy (9/9/1915) and access to birth control (1920), an obituary for Dwight Comstock (9/16/1932), and reports of Nassau County budget cuts (11/9/1942).
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  Selected Quotations
  • Notes encounter with Andrew Carnegie, who "disappointed the department by not adding to the endowment" (1/3/1910)

  • Compares colleague ("Gordon") to the Croatian-American geneticist Milislav Demerec: While Davenport finds Gordon "industrious and fertile in ideas," he adds that he is "not so brilliant as Demerec" (6/3/1930)
 
 Subjects:  American Agriculture Movement. | American Eugenics Society | American Museum of Natural History. | American religious cultures | American West in the twentieth century | Americans Abroad | Biology. | Brooklyn Museum | Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory | Congregationalists. | Diaries. | Expedition | Eugenics. | Europe. | Harvard University. | Meteorology. | Mineralogy. | Mormon Church. | National Institute of Social Sciences (U.S.) | Ornithology. | Princeton University. | Race. | Science. | Topology. | Travel. | United States--Politics and government. | Weather. | Whaling Museum (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.) | Women--History. | World War I. | World War II. | Yale Club of New York City | Zoology. 
 Collection:  Charles Benedict Davenport Papers  (Mss.B.D27)  
  Go to the collection
 
9.Title:  Henry Herbert Donaldson Diaries (1890-1938)
 Dates:  1890 - 1938 
 Extent:  49 volumes  
 Locations:  Amsterdam | Boston | Chicago | London | New York | Paris | Philadelphia | Rome | Washington D.C. | Albany | Amherst | Ann Arbor | Arreau | Atlantic City | Avignon | Avranches | Baltimore | Bermuda | Bryn Mawr | Burlington | Bushkill | Cambridge | Charlottesville | Cherbourg | Cincinnati | Cork | Darby | Denver | Dublin | Eagleville | Edinburgh | Falmouth | Florence | Germantown | Grenoble | Harrisburg | Haverford | Heidelberg | Innsbruck | Ithaca | Jamestown | Key West | Lancaster | Liverpool | Lourdes | Malvern | Martha's Vineyard | Media | Millbrook | Milwaukee | Monticello | Montreal | Nantucket | Naples | Newark | New Haven | New Orleans | Newport | Newtown | Nimes | Norristown | North Berwick | Norwich | Northampton | Ocean City | Oxford | Paoli | Pinebluff | Pittsburg | Portland | Princeton | Providence | Quebec City | Rangeley | Richmond | Saranac Lake | Saratoga Springs | Southampton | St. Louis | Swarthmore | Warm Springs | Toronto | Toulouse | Venice | Verona | Vienna | Vignolles | Villanova | Vineland | Williamsburg | Worcester 
 Abstract:  Contained in 49 volumes, the Herbert Donaldson diaries traverse 1890-1938 and provide glimpses of his neurological work at the University of Chicago and the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, meetings with leading scientists--including Boas and Davenport--European and American travels, recreational activities, personal affairs, and leadership at the National Academy of the Sciences, the American Neurological Association, the Physiological Society, the Lenape Club, the Rush Society, as well as the American Philosophical Society, where he was elected a member in 1906 and vice president in 1935. The Donaldson diaries may interest researchers exploring the history of mental health, American Philosophical Society membership, twentieth-century U.S. politics, the 1893 World's Fair, and World War I. 
    
In contrast to many other scientists, Donaldson captures many world events in his journal. Entries include an on-the-ground account of the 1893 World's Fair (5/13-5/27/1893) and news pertaining to the Great Baltimore Fire (2/7/1904), Russo-Japanese War (2/8/1904), and World War I. Donaldson studiously records the spread of war in Europe (7/31/1914), the increasing likelihood of U.S. involvement (2/4/1917), and false reports of peace. Several days before the Armistice, he writes, "Peace was reported here about 1 pm. The town went wild & remained wild most of the night. Report was a hoax" (11/7/1918). Donaldson also proves an active observer of and participant in U.S. politics. For example, in addition to recording the election of President Wilson (11/5/1912) and death of President Harding (8/2/1923), he writes that he travels to Harrisburg to lobby against an "anti-vivisection bill" (4/25/1907) and attends a "League of Nations dinner" (1/15/1932).
 
Perhaps most surprising is how personal affairs infiltrate the Donaldson diaries. Sometimes such asides are amusing
 
for example, in one entry he writes that he was "attacked by goose without cause" (3/31/1917). Elsewhere, they're more serious and evocative. Shortly after Donaldson writes that his first wife, Julia, is "diagnosed melancholia" and put on an "opium treatment" (9/13/1904), he records her suicide: "our dear Julia was found dead by her own hand at 7 o'clock this morning. She was still warm when found. It is desolation—the saddest of days" (11/10/1904). Several years later, he notes his engagement to Emma Brock (3/1/1907) and, still later, the birth of a son Harry, (3/16/1920). In the 1930s, his health appears to deteriorate: Donaldson begins tracking weight fluctuations on 7/13/1931 and undergoes a metabolism test on 10/17/1934. His last entry, written in third-person in a different hand, appears to have been maintained by someone else, possibly Emma. The diary concludes, "The end at 2 a.m." (1/23/1938).
 
    
Contained in 49 volumes, the Herbert Donaldson diaries traverse 1890-1938 and provide glimpses of his neurological work at the University of Chicago and the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, meetings with leading scientists--including Boas and Davenport--European and American travels, recreational activities, personal affairs, and leadership at the National Academy of the Sciences, the American Neurological Association, the Physiological Society, the Lenape Club, the Rush Society, as well as the American Philosophical Society, where he was elected a member in 1906 and vice president in 1935. The Donaldson diaries may interest researchers exploring the history of mental health, American Philosophical Society membership, twentieth-century U.S. politics, the 1893 World's Fair, and World War I.
 
In contrast to many other scientists, Donaldson captures many world events in his journal. Entries include an on-the-ground account of the 1893 World's Fair (5/13-5/27/1893) and news pertaining to the Great Baltimore Fire (2/7/1904), Russo-Japanese War (2/8/1904), and World War I. Donaldson studiously records the spread of war in Europe (7/31/1914), the increasing likelihood of U.S. involvement (2/4/1917), and false reports of peace. Several days before the Armistice, he writes, "Peace was reported here about 1 pm. The town went wild & remained wild most of the night. Report was a hoax" (11/7/1918). Donaldson also proves an active observer of and participant in U.S. politics. For example, in addition to recording the election of President Wilson (11/5/1912) and death of President Harding (8/2/1923), he writes that he travels to Harrisburg to lobby against an "anti-vivisection bill" (4/25/1907) and attends a "League of Nations dinner" (1/15/1932).
 
Perhaps most surprising is how personal affairs infiltrate the Donaldson diaries. Sometimes such asides are amusing
 
for example, in one entry he writes that he was "attacked by goose without cause" (3/31/1917). Elsewhere, they're more serious and evocative. Shortly after Donaldson writes that his first wife, Julia, is "diagnosed melancholia" and put on an "opium treatment" (9/13/1904), he records her suicide: "our dear Julia was found dead by her own hand at 7 o'clock this morning. She was still warm when found. It is desolation—the saddest of days" (11/10/1904). Several years later, he notes his engagement to Emma Brock (3/1/1907) and, still later, the birth of a son Harry, (3/16/1920). In the 1930s, his health appears to deteriorate: Donaldson begins tracking weight fluctuations on 7/13/1931 and undergoes a metabolism test on 10/17/1934. His last entry, written in third-person in a different hand, appears to have been maintained by someone else, possibly Emma. The diary concludes, "The end at 2 a.m." (1/23/1938).
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  Selected Quotations
  • 1893 World's Fair: "Boas asked me to care for the brain exhibit at the World's Fair" (5/26/1893)

  • Death of Julia: "our dear Julia was found dead by her own hand at 7 o'clock this morning. She was still warm when found. It is desolation—the saddest of days" (11/10/1904)

  • Organizational Leadership: "Special dinner at Lenape Club. 25th of club. 20th of my presidency. My birthday 80…It was a great event for me. No bad effects" (5/12/1937)
 
 Subjects:  American Neurological Association | American Philosophical Society. | Diaries. | Europe. | Franklin Institute (Philadelphia, Pa.) | Medicine. | Mental health. | Neurology. | Physiological Society of Philadelphia | Science. | Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society | Travel. | United States--Politics and government. | Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology | World War I. | World's Columbian Exposition (1893 : Chicago, Ill.) 
 Collection:  Henry Herbert Donaldson diaries and papers, 1869-1938  (Mss.B.D713, D713m, D713p)  
  Go to the collection
 
10.Title:  Smith-Houston-Morris-Ogden Diaries (1836-1987)
 Dates:  1836 - 1987 
 Extent:  179 volumes  
 Locations:  Allentown | Antwerp | Atlantic City | Baltimore | Banff | Baton Rouge | Bethlehem | Bonn | Boston | Bridgewater | Brighton | Bryn Mawr | Buffalo | Calgary | Cape May | Charlottesville | Cherbourg | Cheyanne | Chicago | Cincinnati | Cleveland | Cologne | Columbus | Compiegne | Denver | Des Moines | Detroit | Dieppe | Dijon | Dresden | Easton | Edinburgh | Freeport | Geneva | Germantown | Glenn Mills | Gloucester | Harrisburg | Haverford | Interlochen | Jamestown | Jersey City | Kennebunkport | Lansdowne | Lille | Liverpool | London | Luxemburg | Media | Memphis | Merion | Milford | Milwaukee | Narragansett | New Haven | New Orleans | New York | Niagara Falls | Norristown | Oakland | Ogunquit | Omaha | Ostend | Oxford | Paris | Philadelphia | Pittsburg | Portland | Princeton | Providence | Richmond | San Francisco | Santa Barbara | Seattle | Springfield | Saint-Germain-en-Laye | St. Louis | St. Paul | Swarthmore | Varennes-Vauzelles | Verdun | Versailles | Victoria | Vittel | Washington D.C. | West Chester | White Haven | Williamsburg | Williamsport | Wilmington | Winnipeg | Yarmouth | Yorktown | Zurich 
 Abstract:  The sprawling collection of the Smith-Houston-Morris-Ogden Family Papers feature at least 179 volumes of diaries that traverse the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The majority of the diaries were maintained by the Smith and Houston families (79 volumes and 94 volumes, respectively); however, members of the Morris, Ogden, Clemson, and Kenner families also kept journals. Reading across these collections, researchers will uncover textured accounts of the Philadelphia centennial exhibition, war, science, religion, nineteenth-century education and conduct, and women's history in antebellum and postbellum America. 
    
The Smith and Houston families comprise the bulk of the diary holdings, though the collection also includes diaries from the Morris, Ogden, Clemson, and Kenner families. Smith Family
 
In the Smith family, journals were maintained by George and Gertrude Smith, Lewis Lawrence Smith, Benjamin H. Smith, A. Lewis Smith, Harry C. Smith, and Margaretta Smith. Contained within them are accounts France and England in the late-nineteenth century (The Lewis Lawrence Smith European travel diary), Niagara Falls and the Pacific Northwest in the 1920s (Smith Western Trip Notebook), reports from the Franco-Prussian War (Benjamin H. Smith's 1870 diary), accounts of antebellum dentistry (A. Lewis Smith diary, dated 3/31/1856), and turn of the century university life (Harry C. Smith diaries). Two sets of papers in this collection deserve special attention, especially for researchers interested in women's history: the George Smith and Gertrude Smith Papers and the diaries of Margaretta Mary Wood (later Margaretta Mary Smith).
 
The George Smith and Gertrude Smith Papers include five diaries that span 1859-1906, the first of which is signed by a Margaret Smith, wife of Dr. George Smith (1859). That volumes features accounts of religious services and prayer meetings, domestic activities (e.g. chess playing, sewing, and dressmaking, social affairs), recreation (including sleighing, learning to ice skate, and a "royal game of ball" on 3/10), and family affairs, including both a funeral (2/20) and wedding (4/28/1859). Getrude Smith's entries provide glimpses into her interior life, including her reading and her private interpretation of religion and morality. For example, she writes: "Dr. George [Frumar?] preached a long sermon—discoursed on war, oath, &c, the beginning of the Society of Friends, the object in keeping silence—other societies. Stated that present-time would be looked on as a dark period by future Christian worlds" (9/4). Alongside person ruminations, Smith's diary also notes numerous visits to Haverford College, a summer trip into Wyoming Valley (beginning 8/4), two solar eclipses (2/17 and 7/29), and her father's visit to an insane asylum (11/3).
 
Traversing the 54-year period of 1860-1914, Margaretta Smith's diaries provide a thorough and near-continuous account of her adult life, which spanned from the Civil War to the outbreak of the first World War. While Smith's accounts of the lived experience of the Civil War are arguably this collection's greatest treasure, her subsequent diaries provide glimpses at postbellum religion, natural disasters, politics, as well as early-twentieth century domesticity.
 
Smith offers accounts of weather, travel by carriage, train, and ship (especially during an 1875 European trip), records of personal affairs such as family visits, weddings, funerals, and personal health troubles (especially her struggle with "neuralgia," marked by crippling headaches), house chores (e.g. cooking, baking, making preserves, sewing, and making ice cream), and recreational activities (including horseback riding, skating, sledding, sleighing, chess, checkers, walks, and piano-playing). Like many of her peers, she keeps careful track of her reading (including Thackeray, Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, and even John Brown) and, thanks to her marriage to Dr. George Smith, she regularly attended lectures, meetings, and commencements at Haverford. She provides firsthand accounts of the Blizzards of 1888 and 1899 (March 1888 and February 1899), and records the election of President Grant (11/4/1868), and assassination of and funeral for President McKinley (9/14-9/19/1901).
 
Most remarkably, however, Smith provides a first-hand account of the outbreak and resolution of the Civil War. She presages the outbreak of war, recording the news that "Fort [Sumter] is besieged" (1/4/1861), the "warlike news" following Mississippi's secession (1/10/1861), and noting fears about "what will become of the Union" (1/12/1861). After the outbreak of the war, Smith thirsts for news, relaying small and large developments. Smith's hopefulness for peace surfaces in early entries. For example, on New Years' Eve 1861, she writes, "A great country in the midst of a civil war! What shall we look for in the New Year. Peace, I trust." However, she nevertheless records attacks as she learns of them, including Fort Sumter (4/15/1861), the Battle of Bull Run (7/22/1861), the surrender of Fort Henry (2/8/1862) and Fort Donelson (2/16/1862), and the Battles of Shiloh (4/9/1862), Antietam (9/10/1862), Fredericksburg (12/15/1862), Gettysburg (7/6/1863), and Chattanooga (11/27/1863). Houston's limited access to information—she often received news via visitors to her home—reveals the slow and uneven pace at which information disseminated during the war. For example, she records the death of Confederate General Johnstone on 4/14/1862, despite the fact that he died a week earlier. Elsewhere, she appears to have access to news print, namely the Atlantic Monthly, which she cites on more than one occasion. In an 8/26/1863 she writes, "Report of English building several iron-clads to send over and assist the Rebels!" By 1864, Smith devotes fewer accounts to military defeats and victories, perhaps because she has grown inured to the bloodshed. Regarding the movements of Confederate soldiers into Chambersburg, she writes, "this does not cause the same alarm that it would two years ago" (7/20/1864). Nevertheless, the war continues to surface in her day-to-day life: she and George board Union soldiers in their home (5/21/1861 and 1/28/1865), see Confederate soldiers in the hospital (8/18/1863), and pass wounded soldiers in train cars (5/23/1864).
 
Civil War historians will find the key events commemorated at length. Those include the Emancipation Proclamation (1/11863)
 
the Battle of Five Forks (4/2-3/1865), which Smith celebrates as something like the end of the war
 
and the assassination of and funeral for Abraham Lincoln, which she records in a series of rich entries spanning 4/15-27/1865. Here, and earlier (e.g. 1/4/1863), Smith takes heart from Lucretia Mott, whom she credits "made a few beautiful remarks on the propriety of silent grief" (4/19/1863).
 
Houston Family
 
The Houston family papers features diaries from "CHS" Houston, Henry Howard Houston II, and Eleanor Houston. The "CHSH Addresses & Notebooks" box includes 20 account books, address books, and notebooks and four diaries spanning 1907-1945. The first diary is perhaps the most unusual: unsigned and undated, with a copyright of 1892, the diarist appears to have contributed entries as early as 1907 and as late as 1931. In some instances, one page features entries from multiple years. For example, November 5 includes a header note from 1931 and a diary entry from 1912 that celebrates the election of Woodrow Wilson. The lengthiest entries relate to a European trip taking in the summer of 1920, during which the diarist notes travel by train and boat, sightseeing, cultural sites, and shopping.
 
The Henry Howard Houston II Papers contain three diaries that span 1913-1917. The first, "Ward's A Line a Day Book," traverses Houston's tenure at Chestnut Hill Academy and the University of Pennsylvania (8/15/1913-3/25/1916). Most entries foreground his recreational activities, including dinners, parties, dances, balls, Greek life, sports (golf, cricket, tennis, swimming, sailing, soccer, and horseback riding), and leisure activities (which Houston variously refers to as "bumming" and "fooling around"). Researchers interested in his studies might also refer to an undated pocket journal that Houston appears to have maintained during a poetry composition class. The second diary, maintained in a French "Agenda" book, picks up less than a year later after Houston volunteered for the American Field Ambulance Service near Verdun, France. These entries (2/1-3/31/1917) reflect a remarkably different young man, who records in unusual detail the horrors of trench warfare. These diary entries present a trove for World War I scholars: Houston describes shell holes along the roadside (3/12/1917), the green light exuded during night shelling (3/14/1917), and the experience of shelling (3/16-3/18/1917). Notably, Houston declares himself a pacifist after a two-day shelling campaign (March 18). He would die on a French airfield a little more than a year later. Entries recorded between 3/11-3/25/1917 are also available in loose, typed pages in a separate box.
 
A prolific diarist, Eleanor Houston Smith maintained some 87 diaries as well various ancillary notebooks spanning 1922-1931 and 1938-1986. These diaries provide glimpses into Eleanor Houston Smith's childhood travels, education, and professional life, especially her conservation work in Maine.
 
As a child, she maintained six diaries related to trips taken in 1920 and 1927. While European scholars may value her accounts of European sites, the 1920 diaries, in particular, may interest World War I historians. The first diary, contained in a black journal entitled "My Trip Abroad" (7/2-9/7/1920) chronicles a trip to Paris that includes occasional allusions to past destruction. For example, Houston notes that Varennes had been "absolutely destroyed," and calls it one of the "saddest and dirtiest" places they visit (8/24/1920). A second diary, a red "My Trip Abroad," picks up where the first left off (9/9-10/5/1920) and includes further references to the war as well as images of the destruction (912-13/1920). Several other diaries furnish accounts of a second trip to Europe six years later.
 
Eleanor Houston Smith maintained diaries throughout her childhood and early adulthood using a variety of different types of notebooks. In some instances, she maintained more than one diary per year (e.g. 1927 and 1931), and others she consolidates multiples years in a single notebook (e.g. 1927-29 and 1924-25). These 10 notebooks include accounts of family travels in the west (summer 1922), her schooling in Paris (1926-27), visits to Yorktown and Jamestown (1931), and San Francisco's Chinatown and Mission districts (1922). Most entries emphasize her early education, secular and religious (including continued attendance of Sunday School) and her studies (e.g. French, music, painting, and golf lessons), though Houston also provides some account of her leisure time, such as play rehearsals, shopping, and socializing with friends. Perhaps most interesting for researchers interested in aviation, Houston notes that she "listened to radio reports of Byrd's flight"—an early nonstop trans-Atlantic flight—in an entry dated 6/30/1927.
 
Houston's subsequent diaries (1928-1986) are maintained in appointment books, engagement books, calendars, and daybooks. These diaries provide accounts of her personal affairs, including French lessons, opera and theater attendance, birthdays, weddings, lunches and dinners, hair and dentist appointments, and various notes about "world affairs." Perhaps most valuable for Houston scholars, her diaries record her conservation work in Maine, as well as the organizations with which she worked at both a national and international (e.g. UNESCO and Conservation Council) and local level (Athenaeum, Franklin Institute, and the University of Pennsylvania).
 
Morris, Ogden, Clemson, and Kenner Families
 
Finally, the Smith-Houston-Morris-Ogden Family Papers also include diaries maintained by William Morris (an 1865 travel diary), Sarah Ogden (a diary dated August 1836), Thomas and Sarah Clemson (two diaries spanning 1854-1855 and 1863), and Josey and Mary Minor Kenner (two diaries with entries spanning 1849-1897). While each of these volumes warrants examination, the Sarah O. (Meredith) Ogden diary might appeal to researchers studying women's history. In a brief "diary" of eight loose manuscript pages dated August 1836, Ogden purports to offer a "mother's detached thoughts and memories, recorded for her children." In execution, Ogden's entries concerning her daughter Gertrude are anything but detached. Traversing both the concrete (such as a tooth extraction) and the abstract (praise for her daughter's imagination, memory, and childlike "intellect"), Ogden's entries are as much a record of her daughter's childhood as they are a window into Ogden's experience as a parent and spiritual guardian.
 
    
The sprawling collection of the Smith-Houston-Morris-Ogden Family Papers feature at least 179 volumes of diaries that traverse the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The majority of the diaries were maintained by the Smith and Houston families (79 volumes and 94 volumes, respectively); however, members of the Morris, Ogden, Clemson, and Kenner families also kept journals. Reading across these collections, researchers will uncover textured accounts of the Philadelphia centennial exhibition, war, science, religion, nineteenth-century education and conduct, and women's history in antebellum and postbellum America.
 
The Smith and Houston families comprise the bulk of the diary holdings, though the collection also includes diaries from the Morris, Ogden, Clemson, and Kenner families. Smith Family
 
In the Smith family, journals were maintained by George and Gertrude Smith, Lewis Lawrence Smith, Benjamin H. Smith, A. Lewis Smith, Harry C. Smith, and Margaretta Smith. Contained within them are accounts France and England in the late-nineteenth century (The Lewis Lawrence Smith European travel diary), Niagara Falls and the Pacific Northwest in the 1920s (Smith Western Trip Notebook), reports from the Franco-Prussian War (Benjamin H. Smith's 1870 diary), accounts of antebellum dentistry (A. Lewis Smith diary, dated 3/31/1856), and turn of the century university life (Harry C. Smith diaries). Two sets of papers in this collection deserve special attention, especially for researchers interested in women's history: the George Smith and Gertrude Smith Papers and the diaries of Margaretta Mary Wood (later Margaretta Mary Smith).
 
The George Smith and Gertrude Smith Papers include five diaries that span 1859-1906, the first of which is signed by a Margaret Smith, wife of Dr. George Smith (1859). That volumes features accounts of religious services and prayer meetings, domestic activities (e.g. chess playing, sewing, and dressmaking, social affairs), recreation (including sleighing, learning to ice skate, and a "royal game of ball" on 3/10), and family affairs, including both a funeral (2/20) and wedding (4/28/1859). Getrude Smith's entries provide glimpses into her interior life, including her reading and her private interpretation of religion and morality. For example, she writes: "Dr. George [Frumar?] preached a long sermon—discoursed on war, oath, &c, the beginning of the Society of Friends, the object in keeping silence—other societies. Stated that present-time would be looked on as a dark period by future Christian worlds" (9/4). Alongside person ruminations, Smith's diary also notes numerous visits to Haverford College, a summer trip into Wyoming Valley (beginning 8/4), two solar eclipses (2/17 and 7/29), and her father's visit to an insane asylum (11/3).
 
Traversing the 54-year period of 1860-1914, Margaretta Smith's diaries provide a thorough and near-continuous account of her adult life, which spanned from the Civil War to the outbreak of the first World War. While Smith's accounts of the lived experience of the Civil War are arguably this collection's greatest treasure, her subsequent diaries provide glimpses at postbellum religion, natural disasters, politics, as well as early-twentieth century domesticity.
 
Smith offers accounts of weather, travel by carriage, train, and ship (especially during an 1875 European trip), records of personal affairs such as family visits, weddings, funerals, and personal health troubles (especially her struggle with "neuralgia," marked by crippling headaches), house chores (e.g. cooking, baking, making preserves, sewing, and making ice cream), and recreational activities (including horseback riding, skating, sledding, sleighing, chess, checkers, walks, and piano-playing). Like many of her peers, she keeps careful track of her reading (including Thackeray, Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, and even John Brown) and, thanks to her marriage to Dr. George Smith, she regularly attended lectures, meetings, and commencements at Haverford. She provides firsthand accounts of the Blizzards of 1888 and 1899 (March 1888 and February 1899), and records the election of President Grant (11/4/1868), and assassination of and funeral for President McKinley (9/14-9/19/1901).
 
Most remarkably, however, Smith provides a first-hand account of the outbreak and resolution of the Civil War. She presages the outbreak of war, recording the news that "Fort [Sumter] is besieged" (1/4/1861), the "warlike news" following Mississippi's secession (1/10/1861), and noting fears about "what will become of the Union" (1/12/1861). After the outbreak of the war, Smith thirsts for news, relaying small and large developments. Smith's hopefulness for peace surfaces in early entries. For example, on New Years' Eve 1861, she writes, "A great country in the midst of a civil war! What shall we look for in the New Year. Peace, I trust." However, she nevertheless records attacks as she learns of them, including Fort Sumter (4/15/1861), the Battle of Bull Run (7/22/1861), the surrender of Fort Henry (2/8/1862) and Fort Donelson (2/16/1862), and the Battles of Shiloh (4/9/1862), Antietam (9/10/1862), Fredericksburg (12/15/1862), Gettysburg (7/6/1863), and Chattanooga (11/27/1863). Houston's limited access to information—she often received news via visitors to her home—reveals the slow and uneven pace at which information disseminated during the war. For example, she records the death of Confederate General Johnstone on 4/14/1862, despite the fact that he died a week earlier. Elsewhere, she appears to have access to news print, namely the Atlantic Monthly, which she cites on more than one occasion. In an 8/26/1863 she writes, "Report of English building several iron-clads to send over and assist the Rebels!" By 1864, Smith devotes fewer accounts to military defeats and victories, perhaps because she has grown inured to the bloodshed. Regarding the movements of Confederate soldiers into Chambersburg, she writes, "this does not cause the same alarm that it would two years ago" (7/20/1864). Nevertheless, the war continues to surface in her day-to-day life: she and George board Union soldiers in their home (5/21/1861 and 1/28/1865), see Confederate soldiers in the hospital (8/18/1863), and pass wounded soldiers in train cars (5/23/1864).
 
Civil War historians will find the key events commemorated at length. Those include the Emancipation Proclamation (1/11863)
 
the Battle of Five Forks (4/2-3/1865), which Smith celebrates as something like the end of the war
 
and the assassination of and funeral for Abraham Lincoln, which she records in a series of rich entries spanning 4/15-27/1865. Here, and earlier (e.g. 1/4/1863), Smith takes heart from Lucretia Mott, whom she credits "made a few beautiful remarks on the propriety of silent grief" (4/19/1863).
 
Houston Family
 
The Houston family papers features diaries from "CHS" Houston, Henry Howard Houston II, and Eleanor Houston. The "CHSH Addresses & Notebooks" box includes 20 account books, address books, and notebooks and four diaries spanning 1907-1945. The first diary is perhaps the most unusual: unsigned and undated, with a copyright of 1892, the diarist appears to have contributed entries as early as 1907 and as late as 1931. In some instances, one page features entries from multiple years. For example, November 5 includes a header note from 1931 and a diary entry from 1912 that celebrates the election of Woodrow Wilson. The lengthiest entries relate to a European trip taking in the summer of 1920, during which the diarist notes travel by train and boat, sightseeing, cultural sites, and shopping.
 
The Henry Howard Houston II Papers contain three diaries that span 1913-1917. The first, "Ward's A Line a Day Book," traverses Houston's tenure at Chestnut Hill Academy and the University of Pennsylvania (8/15/1913-3/25/1916). Most entries foreground his recreational activities, including dinners, parties, dances, balls, Greek life, sports (golf, cricket, tennis, swimming, sailing, soccer, and horseback riding), and leisure activities (which Houston variously refers to as "bumming" and "fooling around"). Researchers interested in his studies might also refer to an undated pocket journal that Houston appears to have maintained during a poetry composition class. The second diary, maintained in a French "Agenda" book, picks up less than a year later after Houston volunteered for the American Field Ambulance Service near Verdun, France. These entries (2/1-3/31/1917) reflect a remarkably different young man, who records in unusual detail the horrors of trench warfare. These diary entries present a trove for World War I scholars: Houston describes shell holes along the roadside (3/12/1917), the green light exuded during night shelling (3/14/1917), and the experience of shelling (3/16-3/18/1917). Notably, Houston declares himself a pacifist after a two-day shelling campaign (March 18). He would die on a French airfield a little more than a year later. Entries recorded between 3/11-3/25/1917 are also available in loose, typed pages in a separate box.
 
A prolific diarist, Eleanor Houston Smith maintained some 87 diaries as well various ancillary notebooks spanning 1922-1931 and 1938-1986. These diaries provide glimpses into Eleanor Houston Smith's childhood travels, education, and professional life, especially her conservation work in Maine.
 
As a child, she maintained six diaries related to trips taken in 1920 and 1927. While European scholars may value her accounts of European sites, the 1920 diaries, in particular, may interest World War I historians. The first diary, contained in a black journal entitled "My Trip Abroad" (7/2-9/7/1920) chronicles a trip to Paris that includes occasional allusions to past destruction. For example, Houston notes that Varennes had been "absolutely destroyed," and calls it one of the "saddest and dirtiest" places they visit (8/24/1920). A second diary, a red "My Trip Abroad," picks up where the first left off (9/9-10/5/1920) and includes further references to the war as well as images of the destruction (912-13/1920). Several other diaries furnish accounts of a second trip to Europe six years later.
 
Eleanor Houston Smith maintained diaries throughout her childhood and early adulthood using a variety of different types of notebooks. In some instances, she maintained more than one diary per year (e.g. 1927 and 1931), and others she consolidates multiples years in a single notebook (e.g. 1927-29 and 1924-25). These 10 notebooks include accounts of family travels in the west (summer 1922), her schooling in Paris (1926-27), visits to Yorktown and Jamestown (1931), and San Francisco's Chinatown and Mission districts (1922). Most entries emphasize her early education, secular and religious (including continued attendance of Sunday School) and her studies (e.g. French, music, painting, and golf lessons), though Houston also provides some account of her leisure time, such as play rehearsals, shopping, and socializing with friends. Perhaps most interesting for researchers interested in aviation, Houston notes that she "listened to radio reports of Byrd's flight"—an early nonstop trans-Atlantic flight—in an entry dated 6/30/1927.
 
Houston's subsequent diaries (1928-1986) are maintained in appointment books, engagement books, calendars, and daybooks. These diaries provide accounts of her personal affairs, including French lessons, opera and theater attendance, birthdays, weddings, lunches and dinners, hair and dentist appointments, and various notes about "world affairs." Perhaps most valuable for Houston scholars, her diaries record her conservation work in Maine, as well as the organizations with which she worked at both a national and international (e.g. UNESCO and Conservation Council) and local level (Athenaeum, Franklin Institute, and the University of Pennsylvania).
 
Morris, Ogden, Clemson, and Kenner Families
 
Finally, the Smith-Houston-Morris-Ogden Family Papers also include diaries maintained by William Morris (an 1865 travel diary), Sarah Ogden (a diary dated August 1836), Thomas and Sarah Clemson (two diaries spanning 1854-1855 and 1863), and Josey and Mary Minor Kenner (two diaries with entries spanning 1849-1897). While each of these volumes warrants examination, the Sarah O. (Meredith) Ogden diary might appeal to researchers studying women's history. In a brief "diary" of eight loose manuscript pages dated August 1836, Ogden purports to offer a "mother's detached thoughts and memories, recorded for her children." In execution, Ogden's entries concerning her daughter Gertrude are anything but detached. Traversing both the concrete (such as a tooth extraction) and the abstract (praise for her daughter's imagination, memory, and childlike "intellect"), Ogden's entries are as much a record of her daughter's childhood as they are a window into Ogden's experience as a parent and spiritual guardian.
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  Selected Quotations
  • Margaretta Smith on Lincoln's funeral: "Town streets draped with mourning from beginning to end" (4/18/1865)

  • Henry Howard Houston II on World War I trench warfare: "What mud. Permeates everything…It is impossible to imagine such utter desolation. The houses are all smashed. Shell holes line the road, the ones in the road are repaired at night. At one place, a dead horse sticks his head out of a pile rubbish. At another there is a French ambulance at the bottom of a bank. The driver was killed by rifle ride. The road passes within half a mile of the trenches and one can see them plainly. "No man's land" cannot be described. It is like coke-oven district around Pittsburg, only more so. It is the deadest strip of ground I have ever seen and the most depressing and desolate…The grave yard in back of the post de secours is fire at so often that a man is lucky to stay buried two days" (3/12/1917)

  • Sarah Ogden on heart and intellect: "It is a false idea that 'Intellect' may make us independent of our fellow mortals—that proudly wrapping ourselves in our own high aspirations and bright imaginings we may feel that the world is nothing to us—that we superior to its love or its hate! Sooner or later we shall learn the bitter lessons—that it is not so. While we are in this world, the heart needs an earthly resting place—and the wider the chasm which separates us in mind from those around us—the more [fervently] should we seek to build their hearts to us, in deep and enduring love…Let her guard with tenfold vigilance the chain of affection which links her with her fellow mortals. Then indeed may 'Intellect' be to her, one of life's most precious blessings! precious as regards her own happiness—but far more precious —if in the influence it give her over others it enables her to consecrate her spirit's highest energies to Him 'from whom commeth every good and perfect gift' and in whose rights mind highest wisdom is but folly!—the very faintest shadowing forth of that glory—which we may finally trust shall be revealed in us…" (8/18/1836)
 
 Subjects:  American Civil War, 1861-1865 | Athenaeum of Philadelphia. | Air travel | Asylums | Blizzards. | Business. | Centennial celebrations, etc. | Centennial Exhibition (1876 : Philadelphia, Pa.) | Conduct of life--Anecdotes. | Conservation and cultural heritage | Diaries. | Dentistry. | Education. | Entomology. | Episcopalian | Europe--Politics and government. | Europe. | Franco-Prussian War, 1870-1871. | Higher education & society | Medicine. | Motherhood. | Native America | Pacifism. | Presbyterianism. | Railroad | Religion. | Science. | Shorthand. | Society of Friends. | Sports. | Travel. | Unesco. | United States--Civilization--1783-1865. | United States--Civilization--1865-1918. | United States--Politics and government. | University of Pennsylvania. | Weather. | Weather. | World War I. 
 Collection:  Smith-Houston-Morris-Ogden Family papers, 1659-1985  (Mss.Ms.Coll.76)  
  Go to the collection
 
11.Title:  Vaux Family Diaries (1759-1951)
 Dates:  1759 - 1951 
 Extent:  160 volumes  
 Locations:  Adirondack | Albany | Atlanta | Atlantic City | Baltimore | Bar Harbor | Bath, Maine | Bath, United Kingdom | Belfast | Bethlehem | Birmingham, United Kingdom | Boston | Bristol, United Kingdom | Bryn Mawr | Burlington | Calgary | Cambridge | Charleston | Chicago | Cologne | Denver | Detroit | Dublin | Edinburgh | Edmonton | Field | Geneva | Glacier | Glasgow | Grand Canyon | Harrisburg | Hartford | Haverford | Heidelberg | Jersey City | Kansas City | Kennebunkport | Lake Louise | Lake Mohawk | Leeds | Liverpool | London | Los Angeles | Lucerne | Mammoth Springs | Manchester | Marquette | Milan | Milwaukee | Minneapolis | Montclair | Monterey | Montreal | Narragansett | New Brunswick | New Haven | New York | Newport | Niagara Falls | Norfolk | North Bend | Oxford | Paris | Pasadena | Philadelphia | Pittsburg | Plymouth | Port Arthur | Portland, Maine | Portland, Oregon | Portsmouth | Quebec City | Rapid City | Reno | Richmond | Saint Andrews | Saint Gallen | Saint Paul | Salem | Salt Lake City | San Antonio | San Francisco | Santa Barbara | Santa Clara | Santa Fe | Santa Monica | Sheffield | Sioux City | St. Louis | Swarthmore | Tacoma | Tuskegee | Vancouver | Victoria | Washington D.C. | Winnipeg | Wiscasset | Yosemite Valley 
 Abstract:  The sprawling Vaux Family Papers include at least 160 volumes of diaries traversing two centuries of American history (1759-1951). While those journals are maintained predominantly by generations of George, Richard, and William Vaux the collection is bookended by Richard Vaux (1781) and Mary Walsh James Vaux (1906-1951), both of whom supply some of the most surprising records in the collection. (In fact, the Vaux family included some 10 Georges, three Richards, and two Williams.) Reading across these papers, researchers will discover accounts of early American religion during the Second Great Awakening (especially the Society of Friends and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), European towns and cities between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, late-nineteenth century conservation (with accounts of 1880s Yosemite and Theodore Roosevelt), ante and postbellum U.S. politics (including short-lived factions such as the Locofocos), the fields of business, architecture, and photography, and women's history. 
    
The majority Vaux diaries are maintained at least two generations of George Vaux (1800-1927). Those volumes include entries that may interest researchers investigating late-antebellum politics, religion, and Vaux family history (1854-59 diaries), postbellum weather and meteorological observations (1853-1915 daybooks), late-nineteenth century architecture and urban development ("Llsyfran Diary," 1886-1915), and the religious practices of American Friends in the nineteenth century (1825-1927 and 1886-1901 diaries). However, there are also noteworthy volumes from William Vaux, Richard Vaux, Samuel Sansom, and Mary Vaux.
 
William Vaux
 
The diaries of William Vaux (1883-1908) may interest researchers exploring Philadelphia regional history, western expeditions, late-nineteenth century science (especially photography), late-nineteenth century presidential politics, and the 1893 World's Fair, for which Vaux includes a dedicated volume. In addition to accounts of education, marriage, funerals, and the religious practices of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, William Vaux offers at least one account of Brigham Young and the Mormons (1883 diary). Most volumes emphasize his participation in university life (Haverford College and the Drexel Institute), athletics (the American Alpine Club), and postbellum science (the Photographic Society of Philadelphia, the Quaker Asylum and Penitentiary), with occasional notes pertaining to presidential politics, such as the election and assassination of William McKinley.
 
Richard Vaux
 
Two volumes contained in the Richard Vaux papers warrant careful attention. A typed transcript of a 1781 diary (1/1-10/27) furnishes an account of a loyalist during the American Revolution. As detailed in George Vaux's short introduction to the diary, Vaux apprenticed with Samuel Sansom in Philadelphia beginning in 1768. (The original diary, which begins in March 1779 is unavailable.) A loyalist, he spent much of the war in London and returned to Philadelphia shortly after the revolution (c. 1784). Each entry includes paragraph-length account of personal affairs of and socializing with the English upper class, typically beginning with breakfast meetings and running until often quite late at night (usually Vaux notes that he returns home around 11 or midnight, though several entries are much later). Typical social events include breakfasts and dinners (and the individuals involved), pipe smoking, excursions around England, theater showings (e.g. Covent Garden Play House), daily visits to coffee shops (especially Lloyd's Coffee House), painting exhibitions (including the work of Benjamin West), and the Free Mason Lodge. As George Vaux notes in his introduction, Richard is a "man of the world." He also spends a fairly extraordinary amount of time and money on inns and taverns (including Ambrose Lloyd's, Queens Head Tavern, Bull Tavern, March's Tavern, and Falcon Inn). Equally descriptive are his meticulous accounts of expenses: coffee houses and coaches are the most frequent expenses, though Richard Vaux also notes spending on charity, tobacco, tea, newspapers, baths, books, brandy, and milk.
 
Beginning in September 1781, Richard Vaux embarks on a transatlantic voyage, during which he measures daily progress (distance traveled) and coordinates (latitudes). His time on board is marked by ubiquitous illness, particularly sea sickness, injuries, and fevers. The reader also gains a rich sense of the sailors' diets (including pickled tongues) and daily trials (e.g. pests, as Richard records "dismal nights with the bugs" on multiple occasions, including 10/8 and 10/16). Notably, the narrative ends when the ship is boarded by the Hendrik Privateer, a New England ship under the command of Thomas Bensom, which seizes their brig as a "prize to America" and ransacks their stores (10/26).
 
Samuel Sansom
 
Also included in the Richard Vaux papers is the European travel journal of Samuel Sansom (1759-1760), which provides some of the lengthiest, most conversational, and public-facing diary entries researchers will encounter anywhere in the APS collections. The Sansom diary opens with a note from his former apprentice, Richard Vaux, and other front matter suggests that the journal was transcribed at sea from loose pages so that the author could enable his friends to "partake with him in the entertainment he experiences (in the days of his youth)." The volume also features an excerpt from Elizabeth Drinker's journal with a silhouette of Sansom and a note that Sansom left London on 4/1/1760 and returned to Philadelphia on 5/4/1760.
 
Sansom's account begins at the outset of his transatlantic journey, and pays significant attention to travel delays
 
in fact, leaks require his ship to return to Philadelphia just nine days after departure. Upon arriving in London, Sansom travels widely and socializes continuously, particularly with the English upper class. He attends Quaker meetings, frequents coffee houses, and he is preoccupied with various curiosities, from wax figures (11/13/1759) to a dwarf and giant (2/22/1760). Sansom proves a studious observer of the mechanics of production (e.g. grist mills), English towns and cities (especially Birmingham), and Quaker sermons and religious practices. He regularly intersperses prosaic observations with grand musings (reference the 12/20/1759 and 2/1/1760 entries for examples) intended to instruct and delight the friends he imagines will later read his volume with rapt anticipation.
 
Mary Vaux
 
Finally, the Mary Walsh James Vaux maintained a diary in 1906 and for most of the period spanning 1921-1951. Those 40 volumes may interest researchers interested in women's history, Philadelphia regional history, Vaux family history, western expeditions, and the outbreak of WWII. Vaux's diaries include inspirational quotes, notes from religious meetings, lectures, and receptions, shopping lists, addresses, and notes on the weather. Her entries frequently reference the Pennsylvania Yearly Meeting (Society of Friends) as well as the League of Women Voters, Female Society for the Relief and Employ of the Poor, and the Salvation Army. Diaries sometimes include ephemera, such as dried leaves and photographs (1927).
 
Although Mary Vaux tends to record cursory notes, sometimes her entries provide insights into her emotional state. Vaux appears to have suffered from depression (reference, for example, 10/29/1927, 11/3/1927, 11/13/1939, and 5/4/1940) and often register significant shifts in mood (compare 9/24/1906 to 11/4/1906). A notebook also appears to include numerous personal letters Mary Vaux collected from her husband, George Vaux, spanning 1932-34. (Each entry begins, "George Vaux is here to speak to Mary"). World War II surfaces in her later diary entries. While Mary Vaux rarely discusses politics or war, her 1940 Pomernatz diary includes draft numbers in place of the 10/27-29 entries. The 12/7/1941 entry in her Excelsior diary and the 12/8/1941 entry in her Pomernatz diary note the outbreak of World War II.
 
    
The sprawling Vaux Family Papers include at least 160 volumes of diaries traversing two centuries of American history (1759-1951). While those journals are maintained predominantly by generations of George, Richard, and William Vaux the collection is bookended by Richard Vaux (1781) and Mary Walsh James Vaux (1906-1951), both of whom supply some of the most surprising records in the collection. (In fact, the Vaux family included some 10 Georges, three Richards, and two Williams.) Reading across these papers, researchers will discover accounts of early American religion during the Second Great Awakening (especially the Society of Friends and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), European towns and cities between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, late-nineteenth century conservation (with accounts of 1880s Yosemite and Theodore Roosevelt), ante and postbellum U.S. politics (including short-lived factions such as the Locofocos), the fields of business, architecture, and photography, and women's history.
 
The majority Vaux diaries are maintained at least two generations of George Vaux (1800-1927). Those volumes include entries that may interest researchers investigating late-antebellum politics, religion, and Vaux family history (1854-59 diaries), postbellum weather and meteorological observations (1853-1915 daybooks), late-nineteenth century architecture and urban development ("Llsyfran Diary," 1886-1915), and the religious practices of American Friends in the nineteenth century (1825-1927 and 1886-1901 diaries). However, there are also noteworthy volumes from William Vaux, Richard Vaux, Samuel Sansom, and Mary Vaux.
 
William Vaux
 
The diaries of William Vaux (1883-1908) may interest researchers exploring Philadelphia regional history, western expeditions, late-nineteenth century science (especially photography), late-nineteenth century presidential politics, and the 1893 World's Fair, for which Vaux includes a dedicated volume. In addition to accounts of education, marriage, funerals, and the religious practices of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, William Vaux offers at least one account of Brigham Young and the Mormons (1883 diary). Most volumes emphasize his participation in university life (Haverford College and the Drexel Institute), athletics (the American Alpine Club), and postbellum science (the Photographic Society of Philadelphia, the Quaker Asylum and Penitentiary), with occasional notes pertaining to presidential politics, such as the election and assassination of William McKinley.
 
Richard Vaux
 
Two volumes contained in the Richard Vaux papers warrant careful attention. A typed transcript of a 1781 diary (1/1-10/27) furnishes an account of a loyalist during the American Revolution. As detailed in George Vaux's short introduction to the diary, Vaux apprenticed with Samuel Sansom in Philadelphia beginning in 1768. (The original diary, which begins in March 1779 is unavailable.) A loyalist, he spent much of the war in London and returned to Philadelphia shortly after the revolution (c. 1784). Each entry includes paragraph-length account of personal affairs of and socializing with the English upper class, typically beginning with breakfast meetings and running until often quite late at night (usually Vaux notes that he returns home around 11 or midnight, though several entries are much later). Typical social events include breakfasts and dinners (and the individuals involved), pipe smoking, excursions around England, theater showings (e.g. Covent Garden Play House), daily visits to coffee shops (especially Lloyd's Coffee House), painting exhibitions (including the work of Benjamin West), and the Free Mason Lodge. As George Vaux notes in his introduction, Richard is a "man of the world." He also spends a fairly extraordinary amount of time and money on inns and taverns (including Ambrose Lloyd's, Queens Head Tavern, Bull Tavern, March's Tavern, and Falcon Inn). Equally descriptive are his meticulous accounts of expenses: coffee houses and coaches are the most frequent expenses, though Richard Vaux also notes spending on charity, tobacco, tea, newspapers, baths, books, brandy, and milk.
 
Beginning in September 1781, Richard Vaux embarks on a transatlantic voyage, during which he measures daily progress (distance traveled) and coordinates (latitudes). His time on board is marked by ubiquitous illness, particularly sea sickness, injuries, and fevers. The reader also gains a rich sense of the sailors' diets (including pickled tongues) and daily trials (e.g. pests, as Richard records "dismal nights with the bugs" on multiple occasions, including 10/8 and 10/16). Notably, the narrative ends when the ship is boarded by the Hendrik Privateer, a New England ship under the command of Thomas Bensom, which seizes their brig as a "prize to America" and ransacks their stores (10/26).
 
Samuel Sansom
 
Also included in the Richard Vaux papers is the European travel journal of Samuel Sansom (1759-1760), which provides some of the lengthiest, most conversational, and public-facing diary entries researchers will encounter anywhere in the APS collections. The Sansom diary opens with a note from his former apprentice, Richard Vaux, and other front matter suggests that the journal was transcribed at sea from loose pages so that the author could enable his friends to "partake with him in the entertainment he experiences (in the days of his youth)." The volume also features an excerpt from Elizabeth Drinker's journal with a silhouette of Sansom and a note that Sansom left London on 4/1/1760 and returned to Philadelphia on 5/4/1760.
 
Sansom's account begins at the outset of his transatlantic journey, and pays significant attention to travel delays
 
in fact, leaks require his ship to return to Philadelphia just nine days after departure. Upon arriving in London, Sansom travels widely and socializes continuously, particularly with the English upper class. He attends Quaker meetings, frequents coffee houses, and he is preoccupied with various curiosities, from wax figures (11/13/1759) to a dwarf and giant (2/22/1760). Sansom proves a studious observer of the mechanics of production (e.g. grist mills), English towns and cities (especially Birmingham), and Quaker sermons and religious practices. He regularly intersperses prosaic observations with grand musings (reference the 12/20/1759 and 2/1/1760 entries for examples) intended to instruct and delight the friends he imagines will later read his volume with rapt anticipation.
 
Mary Vaux
 
Finally, the Mary Walsh James Vaux maintained a diary in 1906 and for most of the period spanning 1921-1951. Those 40 volumes may interest researchers interested in women's history, Philadelphia regional history, Vaux family history, western expeditions, and the outbreak of WWII. Vaux's diaries include inspirational quotes, notes from religious meetings, lectures, and receptions, shopping lists, addresses, and notes on the weather. Her entries frequently reference the Pennsylvania Yearly Meeting (Society of Friends) as well as the League of Women Voters, Female Society for the Relief and Employ of the Poor, and the Salvation Army. Diaries sometimes include ephemera, such as dried leaves and photographs (1927).
 
Although Mary Vaux tends to record cursory notes, sometimes her entries provide insights into her emotional state. Vaux appears to have suffered from depression (reference, for example, 10/29/1927, 11/3/1927, 11/13/1939, and 5/4/1940) and often register significant shifts in mood (compare 9/24/1906 to 11/4/1906). A notebook also appears to include numerous personal letters Mary Vaux collected from her husband, George Vaux, spanning 1932-34. (Each entry begins, "George Vaux is here to speak to Mary"). World War II surfaces in her later diary entries. While Mary Vaux rarely discusses politics or war, her 1940 Pomernatz diary includes draft numbers in place of the 10/27-29 entries. The 12/7/1941 entry in her Excelsior diary and the 12/8/1941 entry in her Pomernatz diary note the outbreak of World War II.
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  Selected Quotations
  • Samuel Sansom: headed to Bath "that famous place of resort for curiosity and pleasure" (10/17/1759)

  • George Vaux: "And so with this entry is closed the year 1898 and a new book is begun. I feel that the year just passed has been full to an unusual extent of trials and temptations hard indeed to bear. O for more resignation, more light, more faith" (12/31/1898)

  • Mary Vaux: "Got my license!" (5/26/1947)
 
 Subjects:  Accounts. | American religious cultures | Architecture. | Athenaeum of Philadelphia. | Blizzards. | British Museum. | Colonial America | Cosmopolitanism. | Diaries. | Europe--Politics and government. | Expedition | Franklin Institute (Philadelphia, Pa.) | Franklin, Benjamin, 1706-1790. | Loyalist | McKinley, William, 1843-1901. | Medicine. | Mental health. | Meteorology. | Mormon Church. | Photographic Society of Philadelphia | Photography. | Piracy. | Religion. | Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919. | Science. | Slavery. | Society of Friends. | United States--Civilization--1783-1865. | United States--Civilization--1865-1918. | United States--Civilization--1918-1945. | United States--Civilization--1945- | United States--Politics and government. | United States--History--Revolution, 1775-1783. | Urban planning and environment | Weather. | Westminster Abbey. | Women--History. | World War I. | World War II. | World's Columbian Exposition (1893 : Chicago, Ill.) | Yellowstone National Park. | Young, Brigham, 1801-1877. 
 Collection:  Vaux Family Papers, 1701-1985  (Mss.Ms.Coll.73)  
  Go to the collection
 
12.Title:  John Clark Slater Diary Abstracts (1900-1975)
 Dates:  1900 - 1875 
 Extent:  1 volume  
 Locations:  Amsterdam | Arlington | Bath | Baton Rouge | Beacon | Beppu | Berlin | Bermuda | Biloxi | Boston | Brookhaven | Brunswick | Bryn Mawr | Buffalo | Buffalo | Cambridge | Cambridge, Massachusetts | Carville | Charlottesville | Cherbourg | Chicago | Cologne | Copenhagen | Dallas | Deming | Denver | Dresden | Durham | Edinburgh | El Paso | Fort Myers | Frankfurt | Fredericksburg | Fukuoka | Fukuyama | Gainesville | Geneva | Glasgow | Gothenburg | Grand Canyon | Great Falls | Greenville | Grindelwald | Hakone | Hart | Harwell | HindAs | Hiroshima | Hohenschwangau | Honolulu | Houston | Innsbruck | Interlaken | Ithaca | Kobe | Kumamoto | Kyoto | Kyushu | Lake Chūzenji | Lake Moxie | Leiden | Lexington | Limerick | Liverpool | London | Los Alamos | Los Angeles | Lucerne | Macon | Madison | Mainz | Malvern | Manchester | Marlborough | Menton | Miami | Minneapolis | Monterey | Montreal | Mount Aso | Mount Unzen | Munich | Nagasaki | Naples | Natchez | Neuschwansteinstraße | New Brunswick | New Castle | New Haven | New Orleans | New York | Newark | Nice | Nikko | Oak Ridge | Oklahoma City | Olympic Valley | Orlando | Osaka | Oxford | Oxford, Mississippi | Paris | Pasadena | Philadelphia | Phoenix | Pittsburgh | Prague | Princeton | Reno | Rochester | Rockport | Rome | Roswell | Saint Francisville | Saint Louis | Salzburg | San Francisco | Sanibel | Santa Barbara | Schenectady | Seattle | Shannon | Shikoku | Shimabara | South Newfane | Southampton | Stockholm | Stoke-on-Trent | Tahoe | Tallahassee | Tampa | The Hague | Tokyo | Uppsala | Venice | Victoria | Vienna | Virginia City | Visalia | Washington D.C. | Weldon | Wells | Worcester, United Kingdom | Yosemite Valley | Zurich 
 Abstract:  The John Slater Papers include abstracts from his diaries, available as loose, mostly typed pages, which traverse his consequential career in physics (1900-1975). These abstracts trace Slater's doctoral study at Harvard (1923) and postgraduate work at Cambridge University, appointment at MIT (1930), work at the Laboratory for Nuclear Science during World War II, and late-career at the University of Florida (after his retirement from MIT in 1966). His diaries contain notes about a trip to Japan (including Hiroshima and Nagasaki) in the fall 1953, meetings with defense contractors (such as Lockheed Martin) throughout the 1950s and 1960s, a sighting of Sputnik (7/20/1958), notes about an "NSF proposal for computing center" (4/30/1965), associations with and publications of APS members (7/7/1951, 7/7/1972), and Slater's own personal affairs, as excerpted in Selected Quotations. As such, these abstracts may interest scholars researching John Clark Slater's career in the field of physics, biochemistry, atomic history, and the history of science more broadly, as well as those considering World War II and military contractors in the Cold War period, the space race, the history of computing, and the institutional history of the American Philosophical Society.; To supplement these diary abstracts, researchers might choose to expand their exploration of the Slater Papers, which also contain 133 research notebooks (1944-1976), a lengthy series of folders, containing lectures, scientific notes, drafts of manuscripts and papers, correspondence from his collaboration with the Los Alamos Labs (1966-1970), and correspondence relating to the National Academy of Science. 
    
 
    
The John Slater Papers include abstracts from his diaries, available as loose, mostly typed pages, which traverse his consequential career in physics (1900-1975). These abstracts trace Slater's doctoral study at Harvard (1923) and postgraduate work at Cambridge University, appointment at MIT (1930), work at the Laboratory for Nuclear Science during World War II, and late-career at the University of Florida (after his retirement from MIT in 1966). His diaries contain notes about a trip to Japan (including Hiroshima and Nagasaki) in the fall 1953, meetings with defense contractors (such as Lockheed Martin) throughout the 1950s and 1960s, a sighting of Sputnik (7/20/1958), notes about an "NSF proposal for computing center" (4/30/1965), associations with and publications of APS members (7/7/1951, 7/7/1972), and Slater's own personal affairs, as excerpted in Selected Quotations. As such, these abstracts may interest scholars researching John Clark Slater's career in the field of physics, biochemistry, atomic history, and the history of science more broadly, as well as those considering World War II and military contractors in the Cold War period, the space race, the history of computing, and the institutional history of the American Philosophical Society.; To supplement these diary abstracts, researchers might choose to expand their exploration of the Slater Papers, which also contain 133 research notebooks (1944-1976), a lengthy series of folders, containing lectures, scientific notes, drafts of manuscripts and papers, correspondence from his collaboration with the Los Alamos Labs (1966-1970), and correspondence relating to the National Academy of Science.
 
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  Selected Quotations
  • "In Washington, talking over plans with RCLM. She agrees to marry me. We'll be married sometime in spring of 1954" (11/21-22/1953)

  • "To My Darling Rose, Who is Even More Fascinating at 70 Than When I first Met Her at 35. From Her Devoted Husband, John Clark Slater" (10/23/1972)
 
 Subjects:  American Philosophical Society. | Asia. | Atomic history and culture | Biochemistry. | Cold War. | Computers--History. | Defense contracts. | Diaries. | Europe. | Higher education & society | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | Physics. | Quantum theory. | Science. | Space flight. | Travel. | United States--Civilization--1918-1945. | United States--Civilization--1945- | University of Florida 
 Collection:  John Clarke Slater Papers  (Mss.B.SL2p)  
  Go to the collection
 
13.Title:  John Warner Diaries (1862-1872)
 Dates:  1862 - 1872 
 Extent:  55 volumes  
 Locations:  Aberdeen | Agrigento | Airolo | Alexandria | Altdorf | Amsterdam | Angers | Athens | Baden-Baden | Barcelona | Bari | Barletta | Basel | Beirut | Belgrade | Berlin | Bern | Birkenhead | Bologna | Boston | Brienz | Bringen | Bristol | Bruchsal | Bruges | Brussels | Budapest | Cadiz | Cairo | Calais | Cambridge | Campodolcino | Capri | Carnac | Chateaulin | Cherbourg | Civitavecchia | Cologne | Como | Copenhagen | Cordoba | Dresden | Edinburgh | Einsiedeln | Empoli | Fano | Finale Ligure | Florence | Floridia | Fluelen | Frankfurt | Freiburg | Gdansk | Geneva | Genoa | Glasgow | Gloucester | Goschenen | Goslar | Granada | Greenock | Grindelwald | Haarlem | Hamburg | Heidelberg | Helsinki | Interlaken | Istanbul | Jerusalem | Kazan | Kehl | Konstanz | Larnaca | Leipzig | Linz | Liverpool | London | Lubeck | Lucca | Lucerne | Ludwigshafen | Luxembourg City | Lyon | Mainz | Malmo | Manchester | Manheim | Martigny | Międzyrzecz | Milan | Moscow | Mount Carmel | Nablus | Nantes | Nazareth | Neuhaus | Newcastle | Nicolosi | Nottingham | Novara | Nuremberg | Oradea | Palermo | Paris | Patmos | Perth, Scotland | Perugia | Pescara | Philadelphia | Piraeus | Pisa | Plouharnel | Pompeii | Potsdam | Pottstown | Pottsville | Preston | Ravenna | Reichenau | Reichenbach Falls | Rhodes | Rhone Glacier | Rome | Roskilde | Saint Gallen | Saint Petersburg | Saint-etienne | Salzburg | Samos | Sempach | Siena | Sissach | Solothurn | Staffa | Stockholm | Stuttgart | Suez | Sulechow | Swiebodzin | Taormina | Thun | Tiberias | Trieste | Turin | Uppsala | Utrecht | Valencia | Vatican | Veliky Novgorod | Venice | Verona | Versailles | Vienna | Vyborg | Washington D.C. | Wetterhorn | Wiesbaden | Witham | Wittenberg | Worcester, United Kingdom | York | Zurich 
 Abstract:  With 55 volumes spanning 7/8/1862-11/23/1872, the John Warner diaries provide a detailed account of his time abroad (1862-1868) and travels throughout Europe. Although many entries are devoted to talks and lectures (mostly pertaining to zoology), Warner proves also a studious observer of people, cultures, and cultural and religious institutions, which he records through numerous sketches and ephemera. In fact, these volumes present a wealth of research opportunities for scholars of material culture, thanks to Warner's curation of nineteenth-century newspaper clippings, advertisements, programs, and personal illustrations. 
    
Warner's diaries provide an intimate record of his far-flung travels. Alongside visits to zoological and mineralogical collections, Warner patronizes numerous places of worship, for which he often provides sketches of murals and architectural features. (His most impressive color illustrations begin around March 1863). Notably, he visits a Jewish synagogue in the Netherlands (10/13/1862) and a mosque in the Middle East (3/31/1865). He copies verses from a tombstone (9/8/1862), and when he tours the Egyptian pyramids, he records hieroglyphics (4/26/1865). He encloses descriptions of natural scenes—e.g. the Wetterhorn (8/31/1862) and Rhone Glacier (9/4/1862)—and also urban spaces, including a locomotive works in Amsterdam (1/26/1863), a foundry in Greenock (1/30/1863), a prison in York (4/7/1863), a gypsy settlement in Romania (6/13/1865), and even an early account of the Grand Kremlin Palace (8/2/1868).
 
Throughout those travels, Warner recollects his native Pennsylvania to draw evocative geographic and social comparisons. For example, he equates a town outside Belgrade to Burlington on the Delaware (6/9/1865). Upon meeting a foreman at machine shop, he compares the conditions of the poor in America and Germany (8/25/1862). Of particular note, he compares the governor of Nazareth to a "Philadelphia negro" (4/15/1865).
 
At various points in his travels, Warner is compelled to confront U.S. domestic affairs, most especially the Civil War. For example, traveling by rail in Germany in late-1865, he writes, "Met in the [train] car Mr. Joseph Kommer, Lincoln Logan Co., Illinois, a few months back to Germany, now on his way home via Hamburg. He had served in the Northern Army
 
related many things respecting the war and was a good union man" (11/8/1865). Several years later, he visits a castle where he notes a "revolver presented to the King by President Lincoln" (7/9/1868). Although Warner rarely discusses politics directly, he registers his own political activities and sympathies. For example, he attends a "Peace Society" (5/19/1863), a "temperance tea" (9/15/1863), and a lecture on "dwellings for workingmen" (1/6/1866). He records at least one conversation about U.S. nativist movements, particularly the Astor Place Riots, writing, "Met an Irishman who had been in the U.S. some years ago. He doubted whether the Irish, in New York had been incited—as a clan, especially—to take part in the late New York riots, and on account of jealousy of the blacks as competitors for work—he was further opposed to Mr. Lincoln's emancipation edict" (8/18/1863). In another prescient entry, he records an exchange with a Polish miller about poll taxes. "A miller spoke to me, among other subjects, of Poland," Warner writes. "He said Austria and Prussia assist to subjugate Poland, because 'they are all tyrants together.' Of our country, he said there would soon be poll tax" (9/14/1864).
 
When it comes to the topic of slavery, Warner reveals abolitionist sympathies via ephemera. He encloses a newspaper clipping from "Aborigine Protection Society," after which he remarks on the emigration of freed slaves to Liberia (5/20/1863), and encloses another clipping entitled "Negro Emancipation" (6/17/1863).
 
Scholars of nineteenth century material culture will be richly rewarded by the diaries. Alongside hand-drawn maps of buildings, cities, and architectural features, Warner encloses numerous newspaper clippings (e.g. (1/10/1863), engravings (9/27/1864), advertisements (7/9/1865), and theatrical programs (10/6/1865). While the majority of those materials are in English, some ephemera—and Warner's own entries—are in German, French, or Italian.
 
    
With 55 volumes spanning 7/8/1862-11/23/1872, the John Warner diaries provide a detailed account of his time abroad (1862-1868) and travels throughout Europe. Although many entries are devoted to talks and lectures (mostly pertaining to zoology), Warner proves also a studious observer of people, cultures, and cultural and religious institutions, which he records through numerous sketches and ephemera. In fact, these volumes present a wealth of research opportunities for scholars of material culture, thanks to Warner's curation of nineteenth-century newspaper clippings, advertisements, programs, and personal illustrations.
 
Warner's diaries provide an intimate record of his far-flung travels. Alongside visits to zoological and mineralogical collections, Warner patronizes numerous places of worship, for which he often provides sketches of murals and architectural features. (His most impressive color illustrations begin around March 1863). Notably, he visits a Jewish synagogue in the Netherlands (10/13/1862) and a mosque in the Middle East (3/31/1865). He copies verses from a tombstone (9/8/1862), and when he tours the Egyptian pyramids, he records hieroglyphics (4/26/1865). He encloses descriptions of natural scenes—e.g. the Wetterhorn (8/31/1862) and Rhone Glacier (9/4/1862)—and also urban spaces, including a locomotive works in Amsterdam (1/26/1863), a foundry in Greenock (1/30/1863), a prison in York (4/7/1863), a gypsy settlement in Romania (6/13/1865), and even an early account of the Grand Kremlin Palace (8/2/1868).
 
Throughout those travels, Warner recollects his native Pennsylvania to draw evocative geographic and social comparisons. For example, he equates a town outside Belgrade to Burlington on the Delaware (6/9/1865). Upon meeting a foreman at machine shop, he compares the conditions of the poor in America and Germany (8/25/1862). Of particular note, he compares the governor of Nazareth to a "Philadelphia negro" (4/15/1865).
 
At various points in his travels, Warner is compelled to confront U.S. domestic affairs, most especially the Civil War. For example, traveling by rail in Germany in late-1865, he writes, "Met in the [train] car Mr. Joseph Kommer, Lincoln Logan Co., Illinois, a few months back to Germany, now on his way home via Hamburg. He had served in the Northern Army
 
related many things respecting the war and was a good union man" (11/8/1865). Several years later, he visits a castle where he notes a "revolver presented to the King by President Lincoln" (7/9/1868). Although Warner rarely discusses politics directly, he registers his own political activities and sympathies. For example, he attends a "Peace Society" (5/19/1863), a "temperance tea" (9/15/1863), and a lecture on "dwellings for workingmen" (1/6/1866). He records at least one conversation about U.S. nativist movements, particularly the Astor Place Riots, writing, "Met an Irishman who had been in the U.S. some years ago. He doubted whether the Irish, in New York had been incited—as a clan, especially—to take part in the late New York riots, and on account of jealousy of the blacks as competitors for work—he was further opposed to Mr. Lincoln's emancipation edict" (8/18/1863). In another prescient entry, he records an exchange with a Polish miller about poll taxes. "A miller spoke to me, among other subjects, of Poland," Warner writes. "He said Austria and Prussia assist to subjugate Poland, because 'they are all tyrants together.' Of our country, he said there would soon be poll tax" (9/14/1864).
 
When it comes to the topic of slavery, Warner reveals abolitionist sympathies via ephemera. He encloses a newspaper clipping from "Aborigine Protection Society," after which he remarks on the emigration of freed slaves to Liberia (5/20/1863), and encloses another clipping entitled "Negro Emancipation" (6/17/1863).
 
Scholars of nineteenth century material culture will be richly rewarded by the diaries. Alongside hand-drawn maps of buildings, cities, and architectural features, Warner encloses numerous newspaper clippings (e.g. (1/10/1863), engravings (9/27/1864), advertisements (7/9/1865), and theatrical programs (10/6/1865). While the majority of those materials are in English, some ephemera—and Warner's own entries—are in German, French, or Italian.
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  Selected Quotations
  • "Met an Irishman who had been in the U.S. some years ago. He doubted whether the Irish, in New York had been incited—as a clan, especially—to take part in the late New York riots, and on account of jealousy of the blacks as competitors for work—he was further opposed to Mr. Lincoln's emancipation edict" (8/18/1863)

  • "a miller spoke to me, among other subjects, of Poland. He said Austria and Prussia assist to subjugate Poland, because 'they are all tyrants together.' Of our country, he said there would soon be poll tax" (9/14/1864)

  • "In the evening to the Schlon Theater – Play, Leonora. Passably well played—the scenery poor. I think I have seen the same play better performed in the German theater of Philadelphia" (8/17/1865)
 
 Subjects:  American Civil War, 1861-1865 | American Colonization Society. | Catholic Church. | Diaries. | Engineering. | Europe. | Judaism. | Middle East. | Morphology. | Naturalism. | Palestine. | Railroad | Religion. | Science. | Slavery. | Society of Friends. | Temperance. | United States--Politics and government. | Weather. | Zoology. 
 Collection:  John Warner letters and papers, 1850-1864  (Mss.B.W243)  
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