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1.Title:  John Ordway Journal (1804-1806)
 Dates:  1804 - 1806 
 Extent:  3 volumes  
 Locations:  Saint Louis 
 Abstract:  These three volumes contain the journal kept by John Ordway from May 1804 to September 1806, while serving as a sergeant of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Ordway's journals note wildlife, daily happenings on the expedition, and interactions with Native peoples. These volumes can serve as a good complement to the original Lewis and Clark ones. The journals have been edited and printed elsewhere, including a recent edition published by the American Philosophical Society. 
    
 
    
These three volumes contain the journal kept by John Ordway from May 1804 to September 1806, while serving as a sergeant of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Ordway's journals note wildlife, daily happenings on the expedition, and interactions with Native peoples. These volumes can serve as a good complement to the original Lewis and Clark ones. The journals have been edited and printed elsewhere, including a recent edition published by the American Philosophical Society.
 
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 Subjects:  Diaries. | Expedition | Native America | Natural history. | United States--Civilization--1783-1865. 
 Collection:  John Ordway journal, 1804-1806  (Mss.917.3.Or2)  
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2.Title:  Pim Nevins Journal (1802-1803)
 Dates:  1802 - 1803 
 Extent:  1 volume  
 Locations:  Alexandria | Baltimore | Bethlehem | Easton | Lancaster | New Brunswick | New York | Philadelphia | Trenton | Washington D.C. | Wilmington 
 Abstract:  The Pim Nevins journal chronicles the travels of an English Quaker in the mid-Atlantic and provides an outsider's perspective of American religion, urban space, and economic affairs during the early national period (1802-1803). The Nevins journal features descriptions of various American cities (including New York, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C.) and introspective accounts of Quaker meetings. For those interested in visual culture, Nevins includes a watercolor illustration of the Delaware Water Gap. The Nevins journal may interest researchers investigating natural history, American urban space, and religious practice during the Second Great Awakening, most especially that of the Society of Friends. 
    
The journal of Nevins' fellow traveler Joshua Gilpin was published in the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 46 (1922). That volume provides a complementary perspective on a portion of Nevins' journey.
 
    
The Pim Nevins journal chronicles the travels of an English Quaker in the mid-Atlantic and provides an outsider's perspective of American religion, urban space, and economic affairs during the early national period (1802-1803). The Nevins journal features descriptions of various American cities (including New York, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C.) and introspective accounts of Quaker meetings. For those interested in visual culture, Nevins includes a watercolor illustration of the Delaware Water Gap. The Nevins journal may interest researchers investigating natural history, American urban space, and religious practice during the Second Great Awakening, most especially that of the Society of Friends.
 
The journal of Nevins' fellow traveler Joshua Gilpin was published in the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 46 (1922). That volume provides a complementary perspective on a portion of Nevins' journey.
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 Subjects:  American religious cultures | Diaries. | Expedition | Natural history. | Society of Friends. | Travel. | United States--Civilization--1783-1865. 
 Collection:  Pim Nevins Journal  (Mss.917.3.N41)  
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3.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)  
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4.Title:  Andre Michaux Journals (1787-1796)
 Dates:  1787 - 1796 
 Extent:  10 volumes  
 Locations:  Abington | Albany | Augusta | Baltimore | Bedford | Bowling Green | Burlington | Carlisle | Charleston | Charlotte | Chicoutimi | Danville | Fort de Chartres | Fredericksburg | Fredericktown | Grandfather Mountain | Knoxville | La Prairie | Lancaster | Lexington | Limestone Cove | Louisville | Montreal | Morganton | Nashville | Nassau | New Haven | New York | Philadelphia | Pittsburgh | Poughkeepsie | Richmond | Saint Augustine | Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu | Saratoga Springs | Savannah | Strasburg | Tadoussac | Wabash | Washington D.C. | Wilmington | Yellow Mountain 
 Abstract:  Michaux maintained travel journals during his excursions throughout North America between 1787-1796. These 10 volumes furnish accounts of Charleston (September 1787), Saint Augustine and the Bahamas (1787-88), the Savannah River (December 1788), and Kentucky shortly after statehood (1794-95). Notably, Michaux records at least one visit to David Rittenhouse and Thomas Jefferson (12/14/1793), and he makes a proposal to the American Philosophical Society to explore unknown regions beyond Missouri and Kentucky, which Jefferson, then Secretary of State, accepts (12/10/1792). French-reading researchers—the volumes are maintained entirely in French—ought to find that these volumes offer insights into Southern and Western exploration during the early national period. 
    
The journal was printed in APS Proceedings 26 (1889):1. The Kentucky travels can be found in Reuben G. Thwaites' Early Western Travels, 1748-1846.
 
    
Michaux maintained travel journals during his excursions throughout North America between 1787-1796. These 10 volumes furnish accounts of Charleston (September 1787), Saint Augustine and the Bahamas (1787-88), the Savannah River (December 1788), and Kentucky shortly after statehood (1794-95). Notably, Michaux records at least one visit to David Rittenhouse and Thomas Jefferson (12/14/1793), and he makes a proposal to the American Philosophical Society to explore unknown regions beyond Missouri and Kentucky, which Jefferson, then Secretary of State, accepts (12/10/1792). French-reading researchers—the volumes are maintained entirely in French—ought to find that these volumes offer insights into Southern and Western exploration during the early national period.
 
The journal was printed in APS Proceedings 26 (1889):1. The Kentucky travels can be found in Reuben G. Thwaites' Early Western Travels, 1748-1846.
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 Subjects:  American Philosophical Society. | Botany. | Diaries. | French--United States. | Geography. | Jefferson, Thomas, 1743-1826. | Natural history. | Rittenhouse, David, 1732-1796. | Travel. | United States--Civilization--1783-1865. 
 Collection:  Andre Michaux et son exploration en Amerique du Nord, 1785-1796  (Mss.508.7.L16)  
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5.Title:  George Hunter Journals (1796-1809)
 Dates:  1796 - 1809 
 Extent:  4 volumes  
 Locations:  Baltimore | Berlin | Blue Lick | Carlisle | Frankford | Lexington | Louisville | Millersburg | Natchez | New Orleans | Philadelphia | Pittsburgh | Port Vincent | Richmond | Sadler | Saint Catharine's | Saint Louis | Shippensburg | Washington D.C. | Wheeling 
 Abstract:  George Hunter maintained four journals during expeditions into Kentucky, Illinois, Mississippi, and Louisiana between 1796-1809. Hunter records his daily affairs, observations of territories, visits to trading centers, and commentary on international rivalries and relations with various indigenous peoples, including the Delaware, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Osage. With rich, narrative accounts of western travel in the early national period—including exploration of Louisiana shortly after the Louisiana Purchase—the Hunter diaries ought to interest scholars researching the American west, Native America, and U.S. empire. 
    
Interested researchers would do well to consult the detailed description of Hunter's four volumes available in the Early American History Note. For the purposes of diary researchers, the first volume (1796) warrants attention for its descriptions of indigenous peoples and early settlements. For example, Hunter offers an extended account of St. Louis (9/4/1796). He also describes an Indian woman whose nose was cut off by her husband for infidelity, a passage excerpted in Selected Quotations (9/9/1796). The 1802 journal documents Hunter's trip across Pennsylvania (Berlin, Carlisle, and Shippensburg), visit to a cave in Kentucky, and discussion of salt production at Blue Lick. Finally, the last two journals (1804, 1809) include various travels in the South, including a description of expedition to the Hot Springs of Arkansas (1804-1805) as well as longitudes and latitudes that researchers might use to trace Hunter's journey. Notably, Hunter discovers Mammoth bones, which he compares to those of Charles Wilson Peale, writing, "I cannot for bear mentioning a great natural curiosity I have just seen here [sic] about 2 ½ Tons of Bones of one or two Mammoths twice as large as Peals" (5/27/1804).
 
    
George Hunter maintained four journals during expeditions into Kentucky, Illinois, Mississippi, and Louisiana between 1796-1809. Hunter records his daily affairs, observations of territories, visits to trading centers, and commentary on international rivalries and relations with various indigenous peoples, including the Delaware, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Osage. With rich, narrative accounts of western travel in the early national period—including exploration of Louisiana shortly after the Louisiana Purchase—the Hunter diaries ought to interest scholars researching the American west, Native America, and U.S. empire.
 
Interested researchers would do well to consult the detailed description of Hunter's four volumes available in the Early American History Note. For the purposes of diary researchers, the first volume (1796) warrants attention for its descriptions of indigenous peoples and early settlements. For example, Hunter offers an extended account of St. Louis (9/4/1796). He also describes an Indian woman whose nose was cut off by her husband for infidelity, a passage excerpted in Selected Quotations (9/9/1796). The 1802 journal documents Hunter's trip across Pennsylvania (Berlin, Carlisle, and Shippensburg), visit to a cave in Kentucky, and discussion of salt production at Blue Lick. Finally, the last two journals (1804, 1809) include various travels in the South, including a description of expedition to the Hot Springs of Arkansas (1804-1805) as well as longitudes and latitudes that researchers might use to trace Hunter's journey. Notably, Hunter discovers Mammoth bones, which he compares to those of Charles Wilson Peale, writing, "I cannot for bear mentioning a great natural curiosity I have just seen here [sic] about 2 ½ Tons of Bones of one or two Mammoths twice as large as Peals" (5/27/1804).
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  Selected Quotations
  • "After dinner crossed the Mississippi, in a Canoe, swimming our horses after it, & came to the Town of St. Louis, on the Spanish side, here we also paid our respects to the Commandant & were politely received…This Town is built on the banks of the Mississippi upon high ground with a gradual descent to the water. Is very healthy to appearance. The children seem ruddy & water is good, & everything puts on a better appearance than on our side" (9/4/1796)

  • "There is a considerable resort of Indians, they are constantly thro & about this hour at all times, like as many pet Lambs, at present there is a Man, his Squa & child sitting by the kitchen fire. The squa has a piece of her nose cut off by this very husband now sitting peaceably by her sit, in a fit of Jealousy, she wears a piece of [Ten?] bent over the part to make out the nose. It seems with them that for the first offence this way with another man, the Squa is punished with a sound drubbing, for the next, he cuts off the end of her nose, & for the third he either kills her or turns her away" (9/9/1796)

  • "I cannot for bear mentioning a great natural curiosity I have just seen here [sic] about 2 ½ Tons of Bones of one or two Mammoths twice as large as Peals" (5/27/1804)
 
 Subjects:  American Western Life | Cherokee Indians. | Chickasaw Indians. | Choctaw Indians. | Delaware Indians. | Diaries. | Expedition | Geology. | Jefferson, Thomas, 1743-1826. | Meteorology. | Native America | Natural history. | Osage Indians. | Science. | Travel. | United States--Civilization--1783-1865. | Weather. 
 Collection:  George Hunter Journals  (Mss.B.H912)  
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6.Title:  Meriwether Lewis and William Clark Journals (1804-1806)
 Dates:  1804 - 1806 
 Extent:  30 volumes  
 Locations:  Arrow Rock | Browning | Cahokia | Cape Disappointment State Park | Cascade | Chinook | Cut Bank | Dillon | Fort Calhoun | Fort Osage | Lemhi Pass | Lewis and Clark National Historical Park | Lolo | Nez Perce National Historical Park | Pompey's Pillar | Portage | Rocheport | Rulo | Saint Albans | Saint Louis | Sioux City | Spalding | Spirit Mound Township | Stanton | Weippe Prairie | Williston 
 Abstract:  The Lewis and Clark Journals are among the most treasured and well-known collections at the American Philosophical Society. These 30 manuscript journals provide a detail record of the travels of Lewis and Clark to the source of the Missouri River and across the continent to the Pacific Ocean, including interlineations by Nicholas Biddle, who later published the narrative "History of the Expedition of Captains Lewis and Clark" (1814). Interested researchers may refer to the Finding Aid for a detailed account of the collection. Scholars researching the Lewis and Clark Expedition and western exploration in the early national period may choose to complement these volumes by paging the Meriwether Lewis Journal (Mss.917.3.L58), which provides an early account of the river trip from Pittsburgh to the winter camp of the expedition (1803), and the William Clark Diary (Mss.917.3.L58c), which details Clark's diplomatic expedition into the Missouri Territory after the expedition (1808). 
    
 
    
The Lewis and Clark Journals are among the most treasured and well-known collections at the American Philosophical Society. These 30 manuscript journals provide a detail record of the travels of Lewis and Clark to the source of the Missouri River and across the continent to the Pacific Ocean, including interlineations by Nicholas Biddle, who later published the narrative "History of the Expedition of Captains Lewis and Clark" (1814). Interested researchers may refer to the Finding Aid for a detailed account of the collection. Scholars researching the Lewis and Clark Expedition and western exploration in the early national period may choose to complement these volumes by paging the Meriwether Lewis Journal (Mss.917.3.L58), which provides an early account of the river trip from Pittsburgh to the winter camp of the expedition (1803), and the William Clark Diary (Mss.917.3.L58c), which details Clark's diplomatic expedition into the Missouri Territory after the expedition (1808).
 
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 Subjects:  Chinook Indians. | Diaries. | Diplomacy. | Expedition | Exploration & encounters | Indians of North America--Missouri. | Indians of North America--Montana. | Indians of North America--North Dakota | Indians of North America--Oregon | Louisiana Purchase. | Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804-1806) | Mandan Indians | Missouri Indians. | Native America | Natural history. | Northwest Coast of North America. | Oto Indians. | Salish Indians. | Shoshoni Indians. | Sihasapa Indians. | Travel. | United States--Civilization--1783-1865. 
 Collection:  Lewis and Clark Journals  (Mss.917.3.L58)  
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7.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)  
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