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41.Title:  Alfred P. Rockwell Notebook (1859)
 Dates:  1859 - 1859 
 Extent:  1 volume  
 Locations:  Freiberg | Harz 
 Abstract:  The Rockwell Papers do not include any diaries per se. While one notebook is identified as a June 25, 1859 diary, there are only three dated entries (8/31, 9/15, and 11/18), none of which begin on the suggested date. Those entries do, however, include granular details of industrial factories and machinery in Belgium and Germany. 
    
The Alfred P. Rockwell Papers also include other notebooks on mining engineering (some containing sketches), including two volumes of notes on John Percy's lectures at the Museum of Practical Geology, 1858, and three volumes kept during his stay at the Bergakademie Freiberg, including one on a course on metallurgy taught by Bernhard von Cotta, 1858-1859.
 
    
The Rockwell Papers do not include any diaries per se. While one notebook is identified as a June 25, 1859 diary, there are only three dated entries (8/31, 9/15, and 11/18), none of which begin on the suggested date. Those entries do, however, include granular details of industrial factories and machinery in Belgium and Germany.
 
The Alfred P. Rockwell Papers also include other notebooks on mining engineering (some containing sketches), including two volumes of notes on John Percy's lectures at the Museum of Practical Geology, 1858, and three volumes kept during his stay at the Bergakademie Freiberg, including one on a course on metallurgy taught by Bernhard von Cotta, 1858-1859.
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 Subjects:  Bergakademie Freiberg | Coal mines and mining--Belgium | Coal mines and mining--Germany. | Diaries. | Europe. | Geology--Belgium. | Geology--Germany. | Geology. | Machinery. | Metallurgy--Study and teaching. | Mining engineering. | Travel. 
 Collection:  Alfred P. Rockwell Papers  (Mss.B.R59p)  
  Go to the collection
 
42.Title:  James Hutchinson Diary (1777)
 Dates:  1777 - 1777 
 Extent:  1 volume  
 Locations:  Chesapeake Bay | London | Philadelphia 
 Abstract:  This incomplete volume describes the culmination of a transatlantic journey taken by James Hutchinson in the winter of 1777 (2/26-3/16). Having completed his medical residency under the supervision under Dr. John Fothergill at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London, Hutchinson describes in detail his journey back to Philadelphia, where he would serve as Surgeon General of Pennsylvania. In addition to offering an account of what Hutchison terms a "very disagreeable" transatlantic voyage, this volume includes an essay defending Quakers from attacks by revolutionaries, which might have been intended for publication. (The essay is signed "A Friend to the Liberty of Conscience.") This volume may interest researchers exploring the eighteenth century Atlantic, seafaring, and the Society of Friends in the American Revolution. 
    
As described in greater detail in the Early American History note, Hutchinson discusses a host of troubles aboard his ship. Those include concerns about lightning strikes to the ship laden with gun powder (2/26), various issues with bread and meat rations (2/28), and a brief encounter with a French brig that Hutchinson describes as "in almost as bad a situation as ourselves, but able to spare several bottles of spirits and roughly two pounds of cheese" (3/3). Upon reaching landfall in Chesapeake Bay (3/9), Hutchinson devotes the remaining entries his journey back to Philadelphia. At the back of the volume, he encloses an essay defending Quakers against chargers of loyalism, for which a rough transcription is provided below.
 
    
This incomplete volume describes the culmination of a transatlantic journey taken by James Hutchinson in the winter of 1777 (2/26-3/16). Having completed his medical residency under the supervision under Dr. John Fothergill at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London, Hutchinson describes in detail his journey back to Philadelphia, where he would serve as Surgeon General of Pennsylvania. In addition to offering an account of what Hutchison terms a "very disagreeable" transatlantic voyage, this volume includes an essay defending Quakers from attacks by revolutionaries, which might have been intended for publication. (The essay is signed "A Friend to the Liberty of Conscience.") This volume may interest researchers exploring the eighteenth century Atlantic, seafaring, and the Society of Friends in the American Revolution.
 
As described in greater detail in the Early American History note, Hutchinson discusses a host of troubles aboard his ship. Those include concerns about lightning strikes to the ship laden with gun powder (2/26), various issues with bread and meat rations (2/28), and a brief encounter with a French brig that Hutchinson describes as "in almost as bad a situation as ourselves, but able to spare several bottles of spirits and roughly two pounds of cheese" (3/3). Upon reaching landfall in Chesapeake Bay (3/9), Hutchinson devotes the remaining entries his journey back to Philadelphia. At the back of the volume, he encloses an essay defending Quakers against chargers of loyalism, for which a rough transcription is provided below.
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  Selected Quotations
  • The back of the journal includes an essay defending the attacks on Quakers by revolutionaries. The essay, signed "A Friend to the Liberty of Conscience," appears to have been intended for publication, although it is not clear if it ever was published: "It is not my business to enquire whether the Quakers at large are either Whigs or Tories, agreeable to the present acceptation of those [term] my private Opinion is that they are not perfectly agreed on the Subject, and belong to neither Class. Leaving this, however for the Subject of another per: I shall venture to affirm with the leave of "common sense" & with the leave of every well meaning violent Patriot, that there never was a more consistent blameless publication made by any religious Body of people, than the address that has been [the] of so much [oblique] it is [put] out as monster, and believed to be such, by those who have not seen it, the man who reads it with attention, and candor will hold it in more esteem. The reader is not to be informed that the Epistle referred to is a religion, and not a Political party that it was published by a sect of Christians who are in conscience opposed to the use of Arms, either for the purpose of offence or Defence. A Sect of Christians who believe that Christ's Kingdom is not of this world and that the Arms of Flesh needs not to be employed in the support of Justice & Truth. It was published too at a time when General How was carrying Fire & Sword through a neighboring State. When by the violence of his Persecution, & Fury of his Arms he terrified many weak minds into submissions, and had prevailed on numbers, and amongst them some Quakers, contrary to their religious profession to withdraw their confidence in Heaven and seek Protection from the feeble Arm of Flesh when they were shrinking under the apprehension of persecution & making their peace with Man, by meanly submitting to human Tests and Oaths or Affirmations, & [sic] Apprehension of either suffering in person or in property had taken what were called Protections, / it must be remembered however that the number of Quakers who did this were compared with those of other Societies / Keeping in our Minds this general Idea of the People, and this short history of the Times let us read the Epistle… The Arbitrary injunctions of ordinances of men, who would compell others to carry on War, & would impose tests not warranted by the Precepts of Christ"—If this is referred only to the Congress it is perfect Toryism, if referred only to the [Commissioners] Lord & Gen. How it is pure Whiggism, but certainly meant equally to both, or either as they may come within the Description the Admonition [wile] neither that of the Whig nor Tory not of a "real Jesuit" but of a sober religious Quaker.—But we shale be Told that part of this sentience is direct treason against the State.—Friends are advised no "to submit to the Arbitrary Injunctions of Men" who would impose "Tests not warranted by the Precepts of Christ or the laws of that happy constitution under which we and other long enjoyed tranquility and Peace"—Nothing can be more clear says the Violent Brawling Whig, than that Quakers are friends to Tyranny and wish for success to the British Arms, yet a man may as soon discover Hebrew, or Arabic in this admonition, as any such Political Sentiment.—It is true they commend such a Civil constitution, under which they have enjoyed an exemption from such Tests are "not warranted by the precepts of Christ."—[this?] was a time when these States connected with Britain enjoyed the Protection of Laws and [those] Laws secured the Liberty of conscience, and an exemption from arbitrary Tests.—These Laws have been trampled on and that constitution has been grossly Violated by the British Parliament in attempting to Tax America without her consent. So say the Quakers and so says every Whig, also the Friends joined others in opposing any impingement on their Liberties, so long as that opposition was carried on consistent with their religious profession.—What then follows from all this? Nothing as far as I can see, only that the Quakers wish to enjoy once more a constitution, which may restore them to the full possession of Religious liberty. Whether they are to enjoy such liberty under the government of a British King or the Government of an American Congress is of no consequence to them, their principles equally forbid them to use Arms either to support an Old Empire or to set up a new one. They pray for Peace but they do not fight for it.—On the whole as the Epistle referred to appeared in a very [perilous time] many people were taught by their fears, and apprehensions to construe it into an active opposition to the independence of America. But the man who considers that the most arbitrary Spies of Despotism, was at that very time practised by the British chiefs, in the Jersies, and that they only, contrary to the Laws, [which] they pretended to support, had been imposing unwarrantable Tests and compelling the People (Quakers as well as others) to submit, and take protections or Hazard both Life and Property.—The man who views the Subject in this light, will be cautious how he [censures] this Epistle, unless he would defend British Tyranny & Usurpation. A friend to Liberty of Conscience"
 
 Subjects:  American loyalists. | Diaries. | Europe. | Fothergill, John, 1712-1780 | Loyalist | Religion. | Science. | Seafaring life. | Society of Friends. | Travel. | United States--History--Revolution, 1775-1783. 
 Collection:  James Hutchinson diary, February 26, 1777 - March 16, 1777  (Mss.B.H97d.1)  
  Go to the collection
 
43.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
 
44.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
 
45.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)  
  Go to the collection
 
46.Title:  Luna Bergere Leopold Field Notebooks and Journals (1931-2006)
 Dates:  1931 - 2006 
 Extent:  113 volumes  
 Locations:  Arroyo De Los Frijoles | Berkeley | Cataract Canyon | Gallup | Grand Canyon | Eilat | Haifa | Honolulu | Jerusalem | Nairobi | Philadelphia | Pinedale | Salzburg | San Francisco | Santa Fe | Sea of Galilee | Washington D.C. 
 Abstract:  Luna Bergere Leopold Papers contain a truly remarkable set of field notes and journals traversing some 75 years (1931-2006). The son of the famous conservationist Aldo Leopold, Luna Loeopold enjoyed a long and multidisciplinary career in his own right, contributing to the fields of meteorology, hydrology, geomorphology, and conservation more broadly. The APS holds two sets of materials that provide rich, nearly daily insights into his long career: Leopold's field notebooks and personal journals. Maintained in 71 numbered volumes—101 volumes total—the field notebooks begin in 1937 and end in 2006, just a day before his death. Given the volume of material, researchers would be well-advised to us the two indices, hand-bound by Leopold, to navigate these volumes. (Thankfully, the APS finding aid is also unusually granular.) In addition to detailed field measurements, readings, and professional travels, Leopold often uses these notebooks to record personal reflections. Arguably the jewel of the collection, however, is a set of 12 large, meticulously illustrated personal journals that collect decades (1931-2003) of personal stories, work perspectives, and travelogues. These journals are so packed with photographs, illustrations (many of them quite remarkable in their draftsmanship), and other ephemera that they might be better described as ornate scrapbooks, and some items have been relocated into separate folders. Scholars new to the collection may choose to begin research with the field notebooks and personal journals by tracing Leopold's wide-ranging twentieth-century travels. In addition to decades of intensive field work in the American west, Leopold spent extensive time in Hawaii prior to statehood (1947-48), visited India shortly after Independence (1955), and conducted a 1970 worldwide trip that carried him to Kenya, Nepal, Japan, and Israel (to which he would return in 1974 and 1983). 
    
 
    
Luna Bergere Leopold Papers contain a truly remarkable set of field notes and journals traversing some 75 years (1931-2006). The son of the famous conservationist Aldo Leopold, Luna Loeopold enjoyed a long and multidisciplinary career in his own right, contributing to the fields of meteorology, hydrology, geomorphology, and conservation more broadly. The APS holds two sets of materials that provide rich, nearly daily insights into his long career: Leopold's field notebooks and personal journals. Maintained in 71 numbered volumes—101 volumes total—the field notebooks begin in 1937 and end in 2006, just a day before his death. Given the volume of material, researchers would be well-advised to us the two indices, hand-bound by Leopold, to navigate these volumes. (Thankfully, the APS finding aid is also unusually granular.) In addition to detailed field measurements, readings, and professional travels, Leopold often uses these notebooks to record personal reflections. Arguably the jewel of the collection, however, is a set of 12 large, meticulously illustrated personal journals that collect decades (1931-2003) of personal stories, work perspectives, and travelogues. These journals are so packed with photographs, illustrations (many of them quite remarkable in their draftsmanship), and other ephemera that they might be better described as ornate scrapbooks, and some items have been relocated into separate folders. Scholars new to the collection may choose to begin research with the field notebooks and personal journals by tracing Leopold's wide-ranging twentieth-century travels. In addition to decades of intensive field work in the American west, Leopold spent extensive time in Hawaii prior to statehood (1947-48), visited India shortly after Independence (1955), and conducted a 1970 worldwide trip that carried him to Kenya, Nepal, Japan, and Israel (to which he would return in 1974 and 1983).
 
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 Subjects:  American West in the twentieth century | Africa. | Asia. | Conservation of natural resources. | Diaries. | Ephemera. | Europe. | Geomorphology. | Hydrology. | Meteorology. | Travel. 
 Collection:  Luna Bergere Leopold Papers  (Mss.Ms.Coll.56)  
  Go to the collection
 
47.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
 
48.Title:  Rose Mooney-Slater Diaries (1917-1954)
 Dates:  1917 - 1954 
 Extent:  18 volumes  
 Locations:  Amsterdam | Atlanta | Boston | Brussels | Cambridge | Chicago | Edinburgh | The Hague | London | Lucerne | New Orleans | New York | Paris | Rotterdam | Stockholm | Washington D.C. | Zurich 
 Abstract:  This collection contains at least 18 diaries spanning more than thirty-five years (1917-1954) of unusual diaries available as both loose pages (contained in 5 folders) and traditional notebooks (11 bound volumes). Maintained by crystallographer Rose Mooney-Slater, these records offer insights into her graduate education at Tulane University and the University of Chicago, Guggenheim Fellowship in Europe on the eve of World War II, and noteworthy career during the postwar period. Alongside many rich ancillary materials--such as a Friendship Book with numerous photographs from 1914-17--Mooney-Slater's diaries provide detailed information about her personal and professional life. Of particular note is a diary describing her aborted Guggenheim Fellowship in Holland at the outset of World War II, as excerpted in Selected Quotations (9/1/1939). With the outbreak of war, Mooney-Slater cuts short her fellowship and books passage back to the United States as others rush to leave Europe. Early diaries provide glimpses into her struggles to balance marriage with graduate education (1928-29) and later diaries document her wide-ranging professional travels during the postwar period, including trips to Europe in both 1951 and 1954. Unfortunately, many of these volumes are water-damaged, and it can be challenging to trace the chronology of materials in folders (particular items in the 1917-1952 folder). However, scholars willing to take the time to peruse these records will be richly rewarded with insights into twentieth-century science, the postwar research university, and the inner life of a remarkable female scientist. 
    
 
    
This collection contains at least 18 diaries spanning more than thirty-five years (1917-1954) of unusual diaries available as both loose pages (contained in 5 folders) and traditional notebooks (11 bound volumes). Maintained by crystallographer Rose Mooney-Slater, these records offer insights into her graduate education at Tulane University and the University of Chicago, Guggenheim Fellowship in Europe on the eve of World War II, and noteworthy career during the postwar period. Alongside many rich ancillary materials--such as a Friendship Book with numerous photographs from 1914-17--Mooney-Slater's diaries provide detailed information about her personal and professional life. Of particular note is a diary describing her aborted Guggenheim Fellowship in Holland at the outset of World War II, as excerpted in Selected Quotations (9/1/1939). With the outbreak of war, Mooney-Slater cuts short her fellowship and books passage back to the United States as others rush to leave Europe. Early diaries provide glimpses into her struggles to balance marriage with graduate education (1928-29) and later diaries document her wide-ranging professional travels during the postwar period, including trips to Europe in both 1951 and 1954. Unfortunately, many of these volumes are water-damaged, and it can be challenging to trace the chronology of materials in folders (particular items in the 1917-1952 folder). However, scholars willing to take the time to peruse these records will be richly rewarded with insights into twentieth-century science, the postwar research university, and the inner life of a remarkable female scientist.
 
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  Selected Quotations
  • "I am going along, not really accomplishing any study, but feeling as though I should, which is bad; I am most unhappy, for all the pleasant thing I want to do in this new spring whether seems better postponed until after the examination" (4/4/1929)

  • "Now that war is declared, I must go, I suppose, It is better to see my beautiful plans go glimmering. Nevertheless, I've had three months in Holland. I should have gone to Cambridge, if I had known that these three months was all. [Kramers] suggested that I go to their house, now that it will be for a few days, but I am not of that mind" (9/1/1939)
 
 Subjects:  Diaries. | Europe. | Physics. | Science. | Travel. | United States--Civilization--1918-1945. | Women--History. | Women physicists | World War II. 
 Collection:  Rose Camille LeDieu Mooney-Slater papers, 1917-1981  (Mss.B.SL22)  
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49.Title:  Benjamin Franklin Bache Diary (1782-1785)
 Dates:  1782 - 1785 
 Extent:  1 volume  
 Locations:  Geneva | Paris | Passy | Philadelphia | Piedmont | Portsmouth | Rouen | Saint-Cloud | Saint-Germain-en-Laye | Southampton 
 Abstract:  The Benjamin Franklin Bache diary offers a record of his early education in Switzerland with an account of his time in Passy with grandfather, Benjamin Franklin, then envoy to France. A translation of a (French) journal maintained in Europe during the American Revolution (8/1/1782-9/14/1785), this diary provides a clear account of Bache's time in Europe in the late-eighteenth century. Notably, the volume also provides some insights into Benjamin Franklin's time in Paris and a brief trip to England, during which Bache records a brief encounter with his uncle, William Franklin. This volume will interest Franklin scholars, though it may also appeal to researchers studying Switzerland, France, or England during the American Revolution. 
    
The Bache diary begins with accounts of his education in Switzerland, during which he witnesses an execution by firing squad, and several curiosities, such as a seven-foot-tall giant. Later, he travels to Passy (outside of Paris) to stay with his grandfather, Benjamin Franklin. Bache furnishes numerous anecdotes from those months. For example, he recounts with interest the launching a hot air balloon in Versailles (6/23, 7/15, and 7/20/1784). Upon his grandfather's arrival in October 1784, Bache registers Franklin's printing activities, including time with Didot, considered one of the finest printers in France (4/5/1785). In addition to visits to Paris, Bache travels with his grandfather to England, where he records a brief encounter with William Franklin—possibly the last time the two would meet (7/24/1785). In the final months of the journal, Bache departs England for Philadelphia, where he arrives on the penultimate entry (9/13/1785).
 
    
The Benjamin Franklin Bache diary offers a record of his early education in Switzerland with an account of his time in Passy with grandfather, Benjamin Franklin, then envoy to France. A translation of a (French) journal maintained in Europe during the American Revolution (8/1/1782-9/14/1785), this diary provides a clear account of Bache's time in Europe in the late-eighteenth century. Notably, the volume also provides some insights into Benjamin Franklin's time in Paris and a brief trip to England, during which Bache records a brief encounter with his uncle, William Franklin. This volume will interest Franklin scholars, though it may also appeal to researchers studying Switzerland, France, or England during the American Revolution.
 
The Bache diary begins with accounts of his education in Switzerland, during which he witnesses an execution by firing squad, and several curiosities, such as a seven-foot-tall giant. Later, he travels to Passy (outside of Paris) to stay with his grandfather, Benjamin Franklin. Bache furnishes numerous anecdotes from those months. For example, he recounts with interest the launching a hot air balloon in Versailles (6/23, 7/15, and 7/20/1784). Upon his grandfather's arrival in October 1784, Bache registers Franklin's printing activities, including time with Didot, considered one of the finest printers in France (4/5/1785). In addition to visits to Paris, Bache travels with his grandfather to England, where he records a brief encounter with William Franklin—possibly the last time the two would meet (7/24/1785). In the final months of the journal, Bache departs England for Philadelphia, where he arrives on the penultimate entry (9/13/1785).
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  Selected Quotations
  • "My uncle the governor was not at Southampton, we found him at Cowes where he was to join us" (7/24/1785)

  • "Behold me at last returned to my native country where more serious occupations prevent my continuing this journal. Finis" (9/14/1785)
 
 Subjects:  Americans Abroad | Diaries. | Diplomacy. | Education. | Europe. | Franklin, Benjamin, 1706-1790. | Printing. | Travel. | United States--History--Revolution, 1775-1783. | Weather. 
 Collection:  Benjamin Franklin Bache diary, 1782-1785  (Mss.B.B122d)  
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50.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)  
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51.Title:  Thomas Peters Smith Journals (1800-1802)
 Dates:  1800 - 1802 
 Extent:  5 volumes  
 Locations:  Bremen | Clermont-Ferrand | Copenhagen | Cuxhaven | Geneva | Grastorp | Grindelwald | Hamburg | Hanover | Helsingborg | Kiel | London | Lucerne | Luxembourg City | Lyon | Mariestad | Mont Blanc | Moulins | Oldenburg | Paris | Rotterdam | Schonberg | Stockholm | Strasbourg | Torshalla | Uppsala 
 Abstract:  Chemist and mineralogist Thomas P. Smith maintained a five-volume journal during a tour through Europe between 1800-1802. Elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1799, Smith bequeathed his journal to the APS with the request that it be published if found to contain information "useful to the manufactories of my country." Although his observations tend to concentrate on European technological improvements in manufacturing and mining (sometimes with rough diagrams), these volumes also document his travels across Europe and comments on European society and culture. Of particular note may be his accounts of Luxemburg (7/14/1800), Hamburg (7/15/1800), and Stockholm (8/22/1800), excerpted in Selected Quotations. Notably, the third volume features a "Resume du Cours del Mineralogie," written in French and English. The Thomas P. Smith journal may interest scholars researching Europe at the turn of the nineteenth century, Smith's career in mineralogy, as well as the institutional history of American Philosophical Society. 
    
 
    
Chemist and mineralogist Thomas P. Smith maintained a five-volume journal during a tour through Europe between 1800-1802. Elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1799, Smith bequeathed his journal to the APS with the request that it be published if found to contain information "useful to the manufactories of my country." Although his observations tend to concentrate on European technological improvements in manufacturing and mining (sometimes with rough diagrams), these volumes also document his travels across Europe and comments on European society and culture. Of particular note may be his accounts of Luxemburg (7/14/1800), Hamburg (7/15/1800), and Stockholm (8/22/1800), excerpted in Selected Quotations. Notably, the third volume features a "Resume du Cours del Mineralogie," written in French and English. The Thomas P. Smith journal may interest scholars researching Europe at the turn of the nineteenth century, Smith's career in mineralogy, as well as the institutional history of American Philosophical Society.
 
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  Selected Quotations
  • "The town of Luxemburg has altogether an air of great antiquity-It is not large and appears to contain but few new houses" (7/14/1800)

  • "Hamburg is the cleanest looking town I have yet seen in this country" (7/15/1800)

  • "The city of Stockholm stands in a most romantic situation--the land round it being fit for cultivation still covered by woods" (8/22/1800)
 
 Subjects:  American Philosophical Society. | Diaries. | Europe. | Industries. | Manufactures. | Mineralogy. | Science. | Seafaring life. | Travel. | Technology. | Weather. 
 Collection:  Thomas P. Smith journal in Europe, 1800-1802  (Mss.914.Sm6)  
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52.Title:  William Strahan Journals (1751-1777)
 Dates:  1751 - 1777 
 Extent:  4 volumes  
 Locations:  Aberford | Belford | Biggleswade | Burrow Bridge | Carlyle | Doncaster | Durham | Edinburgh | Elvanfoot | Felton | Glasgow | Harwood | Hatfield | Lille | London | Newark-on-Trent | Newcastle | Northampton | Oxford | Paisley | Scarborough | Shropshire | Stamford, United Kingdom | Windsor | York 
 Abstract:  The William Strahan diary encompasses four volumes spanning 1751-1777. The first volume features the most detailed entries, whereas the second and third volumes include shorter accounts of multiple excursions and the fourth volume serves less as a journal than a summation of accounts, debts, and holdings. The first volume's accounts of mid-eighteenth-century England ought to interest researchers interested in English urban space, governance, and social conduct. 
    
Researchers will likely gravitate to Strahan's first volume, a detailed, six-week account of European travels taken in 1751 (7/6-8/28). Alongside accounts of weather, road and travel conditions, and various social gatherings (e.g. breakfasts, dinners, teas), Strahan's entries offer glimpses into eighteenth-century English conduct, church services, universities, courts, libraries, as well as villages, towns, and cities and their inhabitants. For example, Straham describes Newcastle as a "a place of Business and Industry equal to London" (7/15) and Paisley as a "perfect hive of industrious people" (8/6). Attending a trial, he remarks upon the conduct of the participants, writing, "The court was very solemn and the lawyers were both elegant and behaved with remarkable decency" (7/22). Strahan even visits a poorhouse in Edinburgh, by which, he remarks, "the City is not only freed of all beggars, but the offspring of such are [tirelessly] snatched from Destruction, so that the Race of disorderly people are hereby extinguished" (7/30).
 
The second (1759, 1760, 1766), third (1768, 1773, 1777), and fourth volumes (1755-1761) are much less detailed but sketch his travel (and distances covered). The fourth volume, in particular, more closely resembles an account book than a journal. As he takes stock of his properties, assets, and debts, Straham records his increasingly wealth—from £ 5,000 in total assets in 1755 to £ 12,000 in 1761.
 
    
The William Strahan diary encompasses four volumes spanning 1751-1777. The first volume features the most detailed entries, whereas the second and third volumes include shorter accounts of multiple excursions and the fourth volume serves less as a journal than a summation of accounts, debts, and holdings. The first volume's accounts of mid-eighteenth-century England ought to interest researchers interested in English urban space, governance, and social conduct.
 
Researchers will likely gravitate to Strahan's first volume, a detailed, six-week account of European travels taken in 1751 (7/6-8/28). Alongside accounts of weather, road and travel conditions, and various social gatherings (e.g. breakfasts, dinners, teas), Strahan's entries offer glimpses into eighteenth-century English conduct, church services, universities, courts, libraries, as well as villages, towns, and cities and their inhabitants. For example, Straham describes Newcastle as a "a place of Business and Industry equal to London" (7/15) and Paisley as a "perfect hive of industrious people" (8/6). Attending a trial, he remarks upon the conduct of the participants, writing, "The court was very solemn and the lawyers were both elegant and behaved with remarkable decency" (7/22). Strahan even visits a poorhouse in Edinburgh, by which, he remarks, "the City is not only freed of all beggars, but the offspring of such are [tirelessly] snatched from Destruction, so that the Race of disorderly people are hereby extinguished" (7/30).
 
The second (1759, 1760, 1766), third (1768, 1773, 1777), and fourth volumes (1755-1761) are much less detailed but sketch his travel (and distances covered). The fourth volume, in particular, more closely resembles an account book than a journal. As he takes stock of his properties, assets, and debts, Straham records his increasingly wealth—from £ 5,000 in total assets in 1755 to £ 12,000 in 1761.
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  Selected Quotations
  • Woolsthorpe: "[P]assed by a small house in an obscure village called Woolsthorpe, where the great Isaac Newton was born" (7/9/1751)

  • Newcastle: "Here is a place of Business and Industry equal to London. The town is large, has a great many streets, and substantial Inhabitants" (7/15/1751)

  • Paisley: "[T]he most thriving place in this country...It is indeed a perfect hive of industrious people" (8/6/1751)
 
 Subjects:  Accounts. | Booksellers and bookselling. | Conduct of life--Anecdotes. | Diaries. | Europe. | Great Britain--History--1714-1837. | Great Britain--Social life and customs--18th century. | Printing. | Scotland--History--18th century. | Travel. | Urban planning and environment | Weather. 
 Collection:  William Strahan journals and accounts, 1751-1777  (Mss.B.St83.St83x1)  
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53.Title:  Alexander Dallas Bache Diary (1862)
 Dates:  1862 - 1862 
 Extent:  1 volume  
 Locations:  Baton Rouge | Mobile | Natchez | New Orleans | Philadelphia | Vicksburg 
 Abstract:  The Alexander Dallas Bache diary offers an unusual view of Civil War battlefields from the perspective of the superintendent of the United States Coast Survey. Bache served as Captain's Clerk aboard USS Harford flagship, one of 17 Union ships that traveled up the Mississippi River to take New Orleans. With entries spanning the spring and summer of 1862 (4/14-7/13), this volume recounts naval bombardments in the early years of the war, provides textured accounts of the Confederate South, and will no doubt interest researchers who study the Civil War, U.S. military history, and the Confederate States of America. 
    
Bache's diary provides curt but consistent accounts of the Union's military operations, particularly along the Mississippi River. Those include the Battle of Charlotte (4/25), the Battle of Baton Rouge (5/28), and the Battle of Vicksburg (6/28). Notably, Bache travels to shore on at least one occasion, furnishing first-hand accounts of the Confederate South. For example, he attends a religious service, writing, "Some of the officers went to church where they prayed for the President of the Confed. States" (5/13). Later, he describes as Natchez as a "very pretty place" (5/18). Interested researchers might consider pairing this volume with the Thomas Hewson Bache Diary, also from 1862, which provides a surgeon's perspective on the Battle of Baton Rouge.
 
    
The Alexander Dallas Bache diary offers an unusual view of Civil War battlefields from the perspective of the superintendent of the United States Coast Survey. Bache served as Captain's Clerk aboard USS Harford flagship, one of 17 Union ships that traveled up the Mississippi River to take New Orleans. With entries spanning the spring and summer of 1862 (4/14-7/13), this volume recounts naval bombardments in the early years of the war, provides textured accounts of the Confederate South, and will no doubt interest researchers who study the Civil War, U.S. military history, and the Confederate States of America.
 
Bache's diary provides curt but consistent accounts of the Union's military operations, particularly along the Mississippi River. Those include the Battle of Charlotte (4/25), the Battle of Baton Rouge (5/28), and the Battle of Vicksburg (6/28). Notably, Bache travels to shore on at least one occasion, furnishing first-hand accounts of the Confederate South. For example, he attends a religious service, writing, "Some of the officers went to church where they prayed for the President of the Confed. States" (5/13). Later, he describes as Natchez as a "very pretty place" (5/18). Interested researchers might consider pairing this volume with the Thomas Hewson Bache Diary, also from 1862, which provides a surgeon's perspective on the Battle of Baton Rouge.
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  Selected Quotations
  • "the bombing in the night was beautiful" (4/19)

  • Receives news that "the American flag flies over Jackson" (4/28)

  • "Some of the officers went to church where they prayed for the President of the Confed. States" (5/13)
 
 Subjects:  American Civil War, 1861-1865 | Confederate States of America. | Diaries. | Medicine. | Religion. | Science. | Travel. | United States--Civilization--1783-1865. | United States Coast Survey. | United States--Politics and government--1783-1865. | Weather. 
 Collection:  A. D. Bache Collection  (Mss.B.B123)  
  Go to the collection
 
54.Title:  George Gaylord Simpson Travel Journals (1924-1984)
 Dates:  1924 - 1984 
 Extent:  36 volumes  
 Locations:  Antarctica | Athens | Baffin Bay | Bangkok | Beijing | Buenos Aires | Cairo | Calcutta | Cape Town | Caracas | Corfu | Curacao | Dakar | Darjeeling | Dubrovnik | Easter Island | Fiji | Frankfurt | Grand Junction | Hong Kong | Honolulu | Hydra | Karachi | Kyoto | London | Los Angeles | Madrid | Mount Everest | Moscow | Nairobi | New York | Piraeus | Rio de Janeiro | Seychelles | Shanghai | Singapore | Sydney | Tokyo | Zanzibar 
 Abstract:  The travel journals of Harvard professor, curator, and evolutionary biologist George Gaylord Simpson ought to be near the top research lists of scholars investigating twentieth-century history, travel, conservation, anthropology, and paleontology. Available in seven boxes of handwritten journals, typed pages, carbon copies, and countless ephemera, Simpson's travel writings provide textured insights into his life, research, intellectual, philosophical, and political positions. Over the course of six decades of journaling (1924-1984), Simpson records at least 36 distinct expeditions, traveling to every continent and documenting discoveries in extraordinary detail and literary style. (Consider the locations identified with this note representative rather than comprehensive of his diverse travels.) Noteworthy journals include: Depression-era trips to Patagonia (1931, 1934), an extended tour of Venezuela in the late-1930s (1938-39), trips to Brazil and the Amazon basin (1954-56, 1983-84), a tour to Spain under Franco (1960), expeditions in North Africa and the Middle East just before the Six Day War (1967), visits to Australia (1951, 1968), Fiji (1968), Indonesia (1975), Papua New Guinea (1976), trips to the Galapagos (1970, 1974), expeditions to the Arctic (1974) and Antarctica (1971-73), a trip to Soviet Union during the Cold War (1977), and a tour of China after its economic reforms (1980).; In his travels, Simpson's mastery of detail is matched only by his curiosity and literary flourish. For example, during his 1938-39 Venezuela tour, he discusses everything from population density (4/25/1939) and the work of Catholic missionaries with indigenous populations (1/15/1939) to the sweet coffee in Barquisimeto (9/21/1938) and his method for killing an opossum without damaging its skin (10/6/1938). At times, his reflections blur the boundaries of prose and poetry. In a collection of reminders from his time in Los Robles, he lists: "The noise they make to shoo animals--This can't be written even approximately, something like the clearing of a throat long and viciously. The sound of rain falling on canvas, on bushes, everywhere, the roar of flooding gullies, and slip and thud of landslides. The sound of pigs slashing and shearing by night outside the kitchen. The smell of fresh, heavily roasted coffee being ground…Hillsides brilliant yellow and pale green with mecutera" (12/19/1938). Researchers may anticipate discovering such redolent entries scattered throughout Simpson's journals, as suggested by Selected Quotations. Although items are not individually cataloged, scholars may choose to begin to mine this rich collection using Anne Roe Simpson's "Note on travel diaries." 
    
 
    
The travel journals of Harvard professor, curator, and evolutionary biologist George Gaylord Simpson ought to be near the top research lists of scholars investigating twentieth-century history, travel, conservation, anthropology, and paleontology. Available in seven boxes of handwritten journals, typed pages, carbon copies, and countless ephemera, Simpson's travel writings provide textured insights into his life, research, intellectual, philosophical, and political positions. Over the course of six decades of journaling (1924-1984), Simpson records at least 36 distinct expeditions, traveling to every continent and documenting discoveries in extraordinary detail and literary style. (Consider the locations identified with this note representative rather than comprehensive of his diverse travels.) Noteworthy journals include: Depression-era trips to Patagonia (1931, 1934), an extended tour of Venezuela in the late-1930s (1938-39), trips to Brazil and the Amazon basin (1954-56, 1983-84), a tour to Spain under Franco (1960), expeditions in North Africa and the Middle East just before the Six Day War (1967), visits to Australia (1951, 1968), Fiji (1968), Indonesia (1975), Papua New Guinea (1976), trips to the Galapagos (1970, 1974), expeditions to the Arctic (1974) and Antarctica (1971-73), a trip to Soviet Union during the Cold War (1977), and a tour of China after its economic reforms (1980).; In his travels, Simpson's mastery of detail is matched only by his curiosity and literary flourish. For example, during his 1938-39 Venezuela tour, he discusses everything from population density (4/25/1939) and the work of Catholic missionaries with indigenous populations (1/15/1939) to the sweet coffee in Barquisimeto (9/21/1938) and his method for killing an opossum without damaging its skin (10/6/1938). At times, his reflections blur the boundaries of prose and poetry. In a collection of reminders from his time in Los Robles, he lists: "The noise they make to shoo animals--This can't be written even approximately, something like the clearing of a throat long and viciously. The sound of rain falling on canvas, on bushes, everywhere, the roar of flooding gullies, and slip and thud of landslides. The sound of pigs slashing and shearing by night outside the kitchen. The smell of fresh, heavily roasted coffee being ground…Hillsides brilliant yellow and pale green with mecutera" (12/19/1938). Researchers may anticipate discovering such redolent entries scattered throughout Simpson's journals, as suggested by Selected Quotations. Although items are not individually cataloged, scholars may choose to begin to mine this rich collection using Anne Roe Simpson's "Note on travel diaries."
 
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  Selected Quotations
  • Skinning an opossum in Venezuela: "The night's catch consisted of one young opossum and one field mouse, quite like, but I think a different species from the others. The opossum was alive and I showed him how they could be killed in order not to hurt the skin—a nasty job, particularly with these beasts which are tenacious of life—I must have been 20 minutes at it, but that's partly lack of skill and strength , I suppose, The animal makes no protest, which is a help—I can do with only a few of these—they have a strong odor, quite like garlic and almost overpowering to the skinner!" (10/6/1938)

  • 'Reminders' from Venezuela: "Things that will remind me of Los Robles…Melancholy shouts of long-drawn 'A---a-a-ah-ooooo!' from one hillside to the next. The noise they make to shoo animals--This can't be written even approximately, something like the clearing of a throat long and viciously. The sound of rain falling on canvas, on bushes, everywhere, the roar of flooding gullies, and slip and thud of landslides. The sound of pigs slashing and shearing by night outside the kitchen. The smell of fresh, heavily roasted coffee being ground…Hillsides brilliant yellow and pale green with mecutera…The smell of thick, green mold." (12/19/1938)

  • Catholic missionaries in Venezuela: "[T]he Venezuelan Catholics did to some extent take over the work and are apparently, on a very small scale, doing some good in civilizing the Indians. It is (in my opinion) unfortunate that this work of civilization should be done by religious missionaries and it is abundantly clear in this account and also in innumerable others it suffers greatly by being inseparably linked with Evangelical efforts and, still more, with bitter factional strife in the area between different sects of missionaries. Sometimes the civilizing efforts merely result in maladjustment, but this is not necessarily so and, taking this friar at his word is not so here. One cannot, then, but approve of teaching the savages elements of hygiene, writing, farming, etc." (1/15/1939)

  • "Incredible swarms of brown people. (Mostly Chinese, but Chinese are brown, not yellow, really.) Especially children everywhere, practically piled up in heaps along the narrow streets. Such a focus (and we know that it only exemplifies the abundance and fecundity of the Asians) is a sort of breeding point quite capable of rapidly populating the whole world—and perhaps likely to do so? The One World, when it comes, must surely be a predominantly Asiatic world in genetic source, at least. How can we, and should we, forever dam back this flood of people? Their increase is checked by starvation, our sentimental amelioration of which can only produce more people to starve later on, and by killing them off, which we are doing but not effectively enough to be a long-range solution. The necessary ultimate solution, if one is ever achieved, is birth, or rather , population control, but this only accentuates the trend because obviously it has been and will be applied sooner and to greater extent by Europeans and Americans than by Asians. I see nothing tragic in a predominantly Asian genetic future for Homo sapiens. I only hope we may be may be sensible enough to incorporate the best of our genes and of our institutions and knowledge into this future, and not force the Asians to exterminate us and wipe out our culture" (6/3/1951)

  • Dictatorship in Spain: "As for dictatorship, of course I don't like the idea any more than Catalonians or any other Spaniards do, but a majority of Spaniards do like it, and in any case it does not impinge on the visitor at all. There are no secret police, and the regular police are just like cops anywhere but rather more polite than in America. The newspapers do not attack the government, but the citizens do very freely and without looking over their shoulders. Most cities have a Francisco Franco or Caudillo avenue, but there is no obvious hero worship and there are few slogans on display. There is a vast amount of road, dam, ditch, and other public construction under way, so the government is obviously turning a decent part of the taxes into useful channels. In fact as even opponents of this regime are likely to stay, this is one of the best governments Spain has ever had in its sorry history, and that is something. The Spaniards have no talent for democracy. They cannot and will not compromise unless the compromise is forced or dictated. It would be nice if a workable democracy were possible, but that is not realistic for now, at least. If a democracy ever does become possible, it is more likely to develop from this rather easy-going personalist dictatorship than from a dictatorship of the proletariat, and there has been no real chance of avoiding one or the other" (8/16/1960)

  • Dress in Nairobi: "The great majority of the Africans one sees are dressed in mad conglomerations of rags, patched and unpatched. A very few wear European street clothes of course although many men do wear shorts. Hotel servants here also in white robes, some with wide belts some with gilets" (6/11/1961)

  • Soviet military activity: "Defense note: At the entrance to the Suez Canal and Port Said are two Soviet warships to defend the canal from attack. From Russian attack?" (3/29/1967)

  • On Blue Whales near Antarctica: "These seas used to swarm with whales, but they have mostly been killed off. No species extinct yet, but the noblest whales of all, the blues, are so near extinction that they probably cannot be saved" (1/22/1971)

  • Rhodesia and South Africa. "1) Few countries compare with these for beauty and scenic, faunal, and floral interest. 2) There are some nice, decent people of any race or color. 3) The legal systems and social mores of these white-controlled countries are so cruel, hypocritical, and disgusting that it is an absurd mockery to call them civilized." (4/2/1972)

  • The Himalayas: "[T]he clouds that were below us at sunrise have risen and broken, still sweep in bits across the incredible panorama, but do not long obscure that parade of peaks from Everest and beyond across to Kangchen junga and beyond. Just below us varicolored and movement Darjeeling basks in fitful and rather cold but delightful sunshine. This unnecessary and so chancy trip is a success, whatever else may not occur" (2/20/1977)

  • Buddhist shrine in China: "This is an awe-inspiring and tremendous place, & we are told that one reason for the multitude of Japanese visitors to China just now is because they hold this temple as particularly holy. But one of my probably many prejudices is that I think the Japanese, as a people, are not much impressed by what I consider holy. For that matter, Americans aren't either. (But I feel what for me is holiness is a temple like this, or a medieval cathedral in France, or an early Mosque in Egypt, without in any of these cases agreeing with rather nasty theology involved)" (9/2/1980)
 
 Subjects:  Africa. | Antarctica. | Asia. | Australia. | Diaries. | Ephemera. | Europe. | Evolutionary developmental biology. | Expedition | Scientific expeditions. | South America. | Travel. | United States--Civilization--1918-1945. | United States--Civilization--1945- 
 Collection:  George Gaylord Simpson Papers  (Mss.Ms.Coll.31)  
  Go to the collection
 
55.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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56.Title:  Henry DeWolf Smyth Diaries (1935-1970)
 Dates:  1935 - 1970 
 Extent:  37 volumes  
 Locations:  Bangkok | Chicago | Geneva | Hong Kong | Kyoto | London | Los Angeles | New York | Paris | Philadelphia | Princeton | Tokyo | Vienna | Washington D.C. | Zurich 
 Abstract:  Henry DeWolf Smyth is perhaps best known for authoring the "Smyth Report," the official government report on the development of the atomic bomb. His diaries offer a glimpse into that report, as well as his career as physicist, diplomat, instructor, policy maker, and administrator. Recorded in 37 notebooks spanning 35 years (1935-1970), the Smyth appointment books reveal his research, extensive professional networks, and wide-ranging travels through the records of meetings, travel arrangements, cocktail parties, and dinners that filled his schedule. While the first couple journals are maintained in small "Lest We Forget" notebooks (1935-1936), the bulk of the collection is available in larger "Frances Juvenile Home Calendar Club" (1936-1958) and "Engagements" books (1959-1970) packed with notes, lists, asides, and occasional newspaper clippings. Notably, he pastes newspaper clippings related to World War II at the front of contemporaneous diaries (1939-1945) and interweaves key news from the war into his own record-keeping, including the attack on Pearl Harbor and U.S. declaration of war (12/7-12/9/1941), the death of President Roosevelt (4/12/1945), and the deployment of both atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki (8/6-8/9/1941). Although the notes are spare, nested within them are insinuations of Smyth's ascendant career. For example, one note records his appointment as Commissioner of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission: "Pres. Truman sees H.— [Henry] offers commission house job. H. home for dinner. We decide yes" (4/18/1949). While it is unclear who authors all of the earlier entries, his wife, Mary C. Smyth, clearly maintains later "Engagements" books (1959-1970). Notably, the "Gray Board" hearings are also detailed in separate page associated with her 1954 diary. Thus, these volumes ought to interest scholars researching Smyth's role in atomic history and international diplomacy as well as those seeking to elevate figures—such as Mary C. Smyth—whose labor might otherwise remain invisible. 
    
 
    
Henry DeWolf Smyth is perhaps best known for authoring the "Smyth Report," the official government report on the development of the atomic bomb. His diaries offer a glimpse into that report, as well as his career as physicist, diplomat, instructor, policy maker, and administrator. Recorded in 37 notebooks spanning 35 years (1935-1970), the Smyth appointment books reveal his research, extensive professional networks, and wide-ranging travels through the records of meetings, travel arrangements, cocktail parties, and dinners that filled his schedule. While the first couple journals are maintained in small "Lest We Forget" notebooks (1935-1936), the bulk of the collection is available in larger "Frances Juvenile Home Calendar Club" (1936-1958) and "Engagements" books (1959-1970) packed with notes, lists, asides, and occasional newspaper clippings. Notably, he pastes newspaper clippings related to World War II at the front of contemporaneous diaries (1939-1945) and interweaves key news from the war into his own record-keeping, including the attack on Pearl Harbor and U.S. declaration of war (12/7-12/9/1941), the death of President Roosevelt (4/12/1945), and the deployment of both atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki (8/6-8/9/1941). Although the notes are spare, nested within them are insinuations of Smyth's ascendant career. For example, one note records his appointment as Commissioner of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission: "Pres. Truman sees H.— [Henry] offers commission house job. H. home for dinner. We decide yes" (4/18/1949). While it is unclear who authors all of the earlier entries, his wife, Mary C. Smyth, clearly maintains later "Engagements" books (1959-1970). Notably, the "Gray Board" hearings are also detailed in separate page associated with her 1954 diary. Thus, these volumes ought to interest scholars researching Smyth's role in atomic history and international diplomacy as well as those seeking to elevate figures—such as Mary C. Smyth—whose labor might otherwise remain invisible.
 
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  Selected Quotations
  • "H&M [Henry and Mary Smyth] together hear president & Congress declare WAR" (12/8/1941)

  • "August 6. First atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan by B-29 on August 5, Japan time. August 9. Second atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan b B-29 (Aug 9, Japan time)" (8/6/1945)

  • "Pres. Truman sees H.—offers commission house job. H. home for dinner. We decide yes" (4/18/1949)
 
 Subjects:  Atomic history and culture | Cold War. | Diaries. | Diplomacy. | Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969. | Korean War, 1950-1953. | Space flight. | Travel. | Truman, Harry S., 1884-1972. | United States--Civilization--1945- | United States--Politics and government. | Women--History. | World War II. 
 Collection:  Henry DeWolf Smyth Papers  (Mss.Ms.Coll.15)  
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57.Title:  Herbert Spencer Jennings Diaries (1903-1945)
 Dates:  1903 - 1945 
 Extent:  17 volumes  
 Locations:  Baltimore | Boston | Chicago | London | Los Angeles | Naples | Oxford | Philadelphia | Tokyo | Washington D.C. 
 Abstract:  The Herbert Spencer Jennings Papers contain at least 17 volumes of diaries and various other workbooks, notebooks, and commonplace books with which researchers may supplement those volumes. Although the volumes span 1903-1945, Jennings maintains them most regularly between 1924-1945, providing detailed insights into his research, teaching, professional networks, writing and publications in the fields of microbiology, genetics, and, to a lesser degree, eugenics. For a short period (1924-27) he maintains some entries in shorthand, but returns to a long form thereafter. Integrated throughout his entries are occasional pieces of ephemera, including notes from students (e.g. 4/8/1929), business cards (11/4/1931), newspaper clippings (7/31/1933), and even the passport photos for he and his wife, Mary Louise Spencer (6/27/1935). Researchers interested in his biography, may choose to begin their research using the volume dated 3/11/1938, which contains entries as late as 1/1/1945. That volume encompasses his retirement from Johns Hopkins University (1938), the death of his first wife, Mary (also in 1938), and his remarriage to Lulu Plant Jennings (1939). Jennings' extended trips abroad, including Italy (1903-4), Japan (1931-33), and England (1933-36), may interest scholars researching twentieth-century Europe. Notably, he maintained separate notebooks with further records and ephemera related to both of the latter trips, including two notebooks related to Japanese language and two large scrapbooks related to his time at Oxford. Finally, scholars specifically interested in his career may take an interest in his sporadic notes concerning eugenics (e.g. 1/27/1933) and Charles Davenport, who also maintained an extensive set of diaries available at the APS (Mss.B.D27). For example, nested inside the diary dated 10/12/1928-7/10/1929, Jennings encloses a note addressed to a Mrs. Lutz (5/31/1929), in which he congratulates her on the twenty-fifth anniversary of an institute, which is almost certainly Davenport's Carnegie Institute (opened 6/11/1904). 
    
 
    
The Herbert Spencer Jennings Papers contain at least 17 volumes of diaries and various other workbooks, notebooks, and commonplace books with which researchers may supplement those volumes. Although the volumes span 1903-1945, Jennings maintains them most regularly between 1924-1945, providing detailed insights into his research, teaching, professional networks, writing and publications in the fields of microbiology, genetics, and, to a lesser degree, eugenics. For a short period (1924-27) he maintains some entries in shorthand, but returns to a long form thereafter. Integrated throughout his entries are occasional pieces of ephemera, including notes from students (e.g. 4/8/1929), business cards (11/4/1931), newspaper clippings (7/31/1933), and even the passport photos for he and his wife, Mary Louise Spencer (6/27/1935). Researchers interested in his biography, may choose to begin their research using the volume dated 3/11/1938, which contains entries as late as 1/1/1945. That volume encompasses his retirement from Johns Hopkins University (1938), the death of his first wife, Mary (also in 1938), and his remarriage to Lulu Plant Jennings (1939). Jennings' extended trips abroad, including Italy (1903-4), Japan (1931-33), and England (1933-36), may interest scholars researching twentieth-century Europe. Notably, he maintained separate notebooks with further records and ephemera related to both of the latter trips, including two notebooks related to Japanese language and two large scrapbooks related to his time at Oxford. Finally, scholars specifically interested in his career may take an interest in his sporadic notes concerning eugenics (e.g. 1/27/1933) and Charles Davenport, who also maintained an extensive set of diaries available at the APS (Mss.B.D27). For example, nested inside the diary dated 10/12/1928-7/10/1929, Jennings encloses a note addressed to a Mrs. Lutz (5/31/1929), in which he congratulates her on the twenty-fifth anniversary of an institute, which is almost certainly Davenport's Carnegie Institute (opened 6/11/1904).
 
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 Subjects:  American West in the twentieth century | Asia. | Asia--Social life and customs. | Biology. | Carnegie Institute. | Commonplace books. | Diaries. | Evolutionary developmental biology. | Eugenics. | Europe. | Genetics. | Johns Hopkins University | Shorthand. | Travel. | United States--Civilization--1918-1945. | Zoology. 
 Collection:  H. S. (Herbert Spencer) Jennings Papers  (Mss.B.J44)  
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58.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)  
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59.Title:  Simon Flexner Diaries (1899-1944)
 Dates:  1899 - 1944 
 Extent:  38 volumes  
 Locations:  Baltimore | Boston | Cairo | Chicago | Hong Kong | London | Manila | New York | Paris | Rome | San Francisco | Tokyo | Washington D.C. | Alexandria | Atlantic City | Bournemouth | Bryn Mawr | Cambridge | Cleveland | Cold Spring Harbor | Dijon | Busan | Hartford | Honolulu | Ithaca | Kobe | Kyoto | Louisville | Naples | Nagasaki | Nagoya | New Haven | Nikko | Norfolk | Oxford | Palermo | Phoenix | Pinehurst | Pompeii | Portland | Princeton | Rochester | San Diego | Sicily | Seoul | Southampton | Vancouver | Williamsburg | Yokohama 
 Abstract:  With 38 volumes spanning 1899-1944, the Simon Flexner Diaries (1899-1944) provide rich insights into Flexner's laboratory work, leadership at the Rockefeller Institute, study of pathology and bacteriology in the Philippines, and observations on Europe at the outbreak of World War II. Alongside his laboratory notes from Manila (1899-1900), early notebooks record medical and ethnographic observations from Japan (1900, 1915), Korea (1915), and Hawaii (1915), whereas later journals document his late-tenure as director of the Rockefeller Institute (1930-35), travels in colonial Egypt (1934), and visit to France (1918, 1931) and England (1918, 1931, 1938-39) in the years between World War I and World War II. The diaries contained in the Simon Flexner Papers ought to interest scholars researching twentieth-century medicine, philanthropy, colonialism, and war, as well as Flexner's leadership of the Rockefeller Institute and contributions to the fields of pathology and bacteriology. 
    
Early lab notes provide insights into Flexner's research in Asia. For example, an 1899-1900 diary offers a window into Manilla hospitals, travel by rickshaw in Tokyo, and observations on geisha, saki, kimonos, and Emperor in Japan. A later notebook, which purports to document a "Trip to China" in August 1915, actually features observations on the population of Honolulu, female education in Korea, and treatment of tuberculosis in Japan.
 
Later notebooks record Flexner's travels in Europe and final years as director of the Rockefeller Institute. A book misdated "January 3, 1931" provides an account of his journey to England and France to attend the Inter-Allied Scientific Conference (9/15-12/28/1918). Notably, on that trip, Flexner learns of the armistice from his waiter and wonders what the future will hold for Germany after the dissolution of Austria-Hungary (11/11/1918). Interspersed in later journals, researchers will discover Flexner's reflections on "Hitler & Jewish intellectuals" (4/12/1933) and the musings on the "German University Situation" (4/15/1933). In a notebook dated December 1934, Flexner documents a trip to Cairo (12/21/1934) and an encounter with FDR, Jr. (1/18/1935). Several notebooks document his directorship at the Rockefeller Institute between 1930-35, including the effects of the Great Depression on the Institute's budget (6/5/1932), encounters with Rockefeller family in (1931 and 1935), and his personal ambitions (1931).
 
Perhaps most surprising are a series of loosely-bound notes from 1938-1944. Those notes include a trip to England on the eve of World War II (1/1/1938-2/7/1939) as well as reflections on the outbreak and progress of the war. "England & France having exhausted every effort to influence Hitler declared war on Poland," he writes two days after Germany invades Poland, adding, "No enthusiasm on the part of any population—German, English, French—on [going late] this war as happened in 1914!" (9/3/1939). A year later, he records the German invasion of Paris, writing, "poor French, poor world civilization" (6/15/1940). Researchers interested in the history of World War II will discover that Flexner studiously records and comments upon key events, including Italy's entrance into the war (6/10/1940), FDR's declaration of a state of emergency (5/27-5/28/1941), the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor (12/7/1941), the U.S. declaration of war on Japan (12/8/1941), the surrender of Italy (9/4/1943), D-Day (6/6/1944), the liberation of Paris (8/23/1944), and FDR's landslide reelection to a fourth term (11/7/1944).
 
    
With 38 volumes spanning 1899-1944, the Simon Flexner Diaries (1899-1944) provide rich insights into Flexner's laboratory work, leadership at the Rockefeller Institute, study of pathology and bacteriology in the Philippines, and observations on Europe at the outbreak of World War II. Alongside his laboratory notes from Manila (1899-1900), early notebooks record medical and ethnographic observations from Japan (1900, 1915), Korea (1915), and Hawaii (1915), whereas later journals document his late-tenure as director of the Rockefeller Institute (1930-35), travels in colonial Egypt (1934), and visit to France (1918, 1931) and England (1918, 1931, 1938-39) in the years between World War I and World War II. The diaries contained in the Simon Flexner Papers ought to interest scholars researching twentieth-century medicine, philanthropy, colonialism, and war, as well as Flexner's leadership of the Rockefeller Institute and contributions to the fields of pathology and bacteriology.
 
Early lab notes provide insights into Flexner's research in Asia. For example, an 1899-1900 diary offers a window into Manilla hospitals, travel by rickshaw in Tokyo, and observations on geisha, saki, kimonos, and Emperor in Japan. A later notebook, which purports to document a "Trip to China" in August 1915, actually features observations on the population of Honolulu, female education in Korea, and treatment of tuberculosis in Japan.
 
Later notebooks record Flexner's travels in Europe and final years as director of the Rockefeller Institute. A book misdated "January 3, 1931" provides an account of his journey to England and France to attend the Inter-Allied Scientific Conference (9/15-12/28/1918). Notably, on that trip, Flexner learns of the armistice from his waiter and wonders what the future will hold for Germany after the dissolution of Austria-Hungary (11/11/1918). Interspersed in later journals, researchers will discover Flexner's reflections on "Hitler & Jewish intellectuals" (4/12/1933) and the musings on the "German University Situation" (4/15/1933). In a notebook dated December 1934, Flexner documents a trip to Cairo (12/21/1934) and an encounter with FDR, Jr. (1/18/1935). Several notebooks document his directorship at the Rockefeller Institute between 1930-35, including the effects of the Great Depression on the Institute's budget (6/5/1932), encounters with Rockefeller family in (1931 and 1935), and his personal ambitions (1931).
 
Perhaps most surprising are a series of loosely-bound notes from 1938-1944. Those notes include a trip to England on the eve of World War II (1/1/1938-2/7/1939) as well as reflections on the outbreak and progress of the war. "England & France having exhausted every effort to influence Hitler declared war on Poland," he writes two days after Germany invades Poland, adding, "No enthusiasm on the part of any population—German, English, French—on [going late] this war as happened in 1914!" (9/3/1939). A year later, he records the German invasion of Paris, writing, "poor French, poor world civilization" (6/15/1940). Researchers interested in the history of World War II will discover that Flexner studiously records and comments upon key events, including Italy's entrance into the war (6/10/1940), FDR's declaration of a state of emergency (5/27-5/28/1941), the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor (12/7/1941), the U.S. declaration of war on Japan (12/8/1941), the surrender of Italy (9/4/1943), D-Day (6/6/1944), the liberation of Paris (8/23/1944), and FDR's landslide reelection to a fourth term (11/7/1944).
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  Selected Quotations
  • Compares WWII to WWI: "No enthusiasm on the part of any population—German, English, French—on [going late] this war as happened in 1914!" (9/3/1939)

  • On his 78th birthday: "It is not a happy time. The gloom and danger of this incredible war [hangs] heavily over the spirits" (3/25/1941)

  • The liberation of Paris: "A very exciting day. Paris has been liberated and it reported also that Marseilles has been taken together with Grenoble" (8/23/1944)
 
 Subjects:  Asia. | Bacteriology. | Diaries. | Egyptology. | Europe. | Medicine. | Pathology. | Philanthropy and society | Philippines. | Rockefeller Institute. | Science. | Travel. | United States--Politics and government. | World War I. | World War II. 
 Collection:  Simon Flexner Papers  (Mss.B.F365)  
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60.Title:  Sylvanus Griswold Morley Diaries (1905-1947)
 Dates:  1905 - 1947 
 Extent:  39 volumes  
 Locations:  Baltimore | Boston | Havana | Mexico City | New York | Philadelphia | Washington D.C. | Acajutla | Aguas Calientes | Albany | Albuquerque | Altar de Sacrificios | Amapala | Antonito | Apizaco | Baldwinville | Benque Viejo del Carmen | Bluefields | Cahabon | Cambridge | Camotan | Campeche | Cayo | Chable | El Ceibal | Chester | Chenku | Chichen | Chorro | Cliff Palace | Copan | Corozal | Esperanza | Flores | Guatemala City | Ithaca | Itza | Jocotan | La Junta | Little Ruin Canyon | Livingston | Merida | Metapan | Miami | Monte Alban | Nashua | New Orleans | Oaxaca | Orizaba | Pabellon de Arteaga | Palenque | Palizada | Palm Beach | Panzos | Paso Caballos | Peten | Piedras Negras | Piste | Prinzapolka | Progreso | Puebla City | Puerto Barrios | Puerto Cortez | Puerto Morelos | Puerto San Jose | Quetzaltenango | El Remate | Rio de Janeiro | Rochester | San Cristobal | San Francisco | San Lorenzo | San Pedro Sula | San Salvador | Santa Fe | Sayaxche | Sipacate | Socorro | Springfield | Swarthmore | Tapachula | Tegucigalpa | Ticul | Tikal | Topoxte | Trujillo | Tulum | Tuxtla Gutierrez | Uaxactun | Utila | Valladolid | Wilkes-Barre | Worcester | X-Kanchakan | Xocenpich | Yaloch | Zacapa | Zacatecoluca 
 Abstract:  The 39 volumes of Sylvanus ("Vay") Griswold Morley diaries span 42 years of the first-half of the twentieth century, and provide textured accounts of Morley's personal affairs, archaeological expeditions in Central and South America, and developments of World War I and II in South America. Morley began keeping a journal while he was in school (1905) and continued maintaining it until 1946, a year before his death the year before his death (1947). Notably, all entries are typed, enabling researchers to quickly scan volumes for specific interests. 
    
Morley's early diaries provide intimate accounts of personal affairs, including his romantic relationships and education at Harvard University. In addition to documenting his budding relationship with Alice Williams, whom he would marry in 1908 and divorce in 1914, Morley writes at length about the planning of his first field trip to the Yucatan (1906-07). During that trip, he provides rich accounts of Havana (2/4/1907), Uxmal (2/15/1907), and his first excavation (8/19/1907).
 
Starting in 1912, his diary takes on a closer resemblance to a field notebook, with detailed accounts of his excavations in Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Mexico. Interspersed in those records are fascinating accounts of the World War I and World War II, including oblique references to Morley's espionage work. For example, on January 9, 1914 he writes of a "curious telegram warning" from Washington: "'Make no affiliations in the C.matter. This is a danger signal. Await further advices.' I cannot imagine what this can mean. Is it a warning against H.? I sent the following reply: 'Have made no affiliations whatever. Will make none. Will preserve absolute secrecy and keep free from all entanglements. My case is in your hands. Am awaiting further instructions.' Think I will hear by Monday."
 
As the war unfolded, Morley recorded its effects in both Central and South America, including President Woodrow Wilson's "destructive" policy in Mexico (2/13/1914), the geopolitical scramble for Guatemala, and the "key-stone of the arch between the Rio Grande and the canal" (12/8/1917). Later, at the outset of World War II, Morley notes Japanese encroachment on the Dutch East Indies (2/19/1941), and even the attack on Pearl Harbor, "a series of shots that literally were heard around the world" (12/29/1941).
 
In fact, war proves disruptive for Morley's work. A colleague, Dr. Moise La Fleur, is killed during a Mexican chicleros attack (5/17-19/1916), an incident from which Morley does not soon recover. Moreover his excavation of Chichen Itza is badly delayed until 4/28/1924.
 
Nevertheless, researchers interested in both the history of South America and the field of archaeology will be rewarded with meticulous descriptions of excavations conducted between the 1920s-1940s.
 
    
The 39 volumes of Sylvanus ("Vay") Griswold Morley diaries span 42 years of the first-half of the twentieth century, and provide textured accounts of Morley's personal affairs, archaeological expeditions in Central and South America, and developments of World War I and II in South America. Morley began keeping a journal while he was in school (1905) and continued maintaining it until 1946, a year before his death the year before his death (1947). Notably, all entries are typed, enabling researchers to quickly scan volumes for specific interests.
 
Morley's early diaries provide intimate accounts of personal affairs, including his romantic relationships and education at Harvard University. In addition to documenting his budding relationship with Alice Williams, whom he would marry in 1908 and divorce in 1914, Morley writes at length about the planning of his first field trip to the Yucatan (1906-07). During that trip, he provides rich accounts of Havana (2/4/1907), Uxmal (2/15/1907), and his first excavation (8/19/1907).
 
Starting in 1912, his diary takes on a closer resemblance to a field notebook, with detailed accounts of his excavations in Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Mexico. Interspersed in those records are fascinating accounts of the World War I and World War II, including oblique references to Morley's espionage work. For example, on January 9, 1914 he writes of a "curious telegram warning" from Washington: "'Make no affiliations in the C.matter. This is a danger signal. Await further advices.' I cannot imagine what this can mean. Is it a warning against H.? I sent the following reply: 'Have made no affiliations whatever. Will make none. Will preserve absolute secrecy and keep free from all entanglements. My case is in your hands. Am awaiting further instructions.' Think I will hear by Monday."
 
As the war unfolded, Morley recorded its effects in both Central and South America, including President Woodrow Wilson's "destructive" policy in Mexico (2/13/1914), the geopolitical scramble for Guatemala, and the "key-stone of the arch between the Rio Grande and the canal" (12/8/1917). Later, at the outset of World War II, Morley notes Japanese encroachment on the Dutch East Indies (2/19/1941), and even the attack on Pearl Harbor, "a series of shots that literally were heard around the world" (12/29/1941).
 
In fact, war proves disruptive for Morley's work. A colleague, Dr. Moise La Fleur, is killed during a Mexican chicleros attack (5/17-19/1916), an incident from which Morley does not soon recover. Moreover his excavation of Chichen Itza is badly delayed until 4/28/1924.
 
Nevertheless, researchers interested in both the history of South America and the field of archaeology will be rewarded with meticulous descriptions of excavations conducted between the 1920s-1940s.
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  Selected Quotations
  • Anxiety about the Chichen Itza project: "I am good for nothing to-day. My anxiety is such that when I try to concentrate my heart jumps into my mouth. A thousand times look at my watch. It reads ten I think twelve in Washington. And so it has been all day. I have done my best now the only thing to do is to wait" (1/15/1914)

  • Acknowledges difficulty of diary-writing: "These annual diaries of mind begin (usually) the day I leave Washington and should continue until I get back, but in looking over them I find that they usually stop when I get back to civilization as expressed by some frontier-town at the edge of the bush on my last trip there into. Perhaps this year of 1922 I may do better but quien sabe, a real diary of events in these eventful countries is a real business to keep going and I may fall by the wayside" (1/10/1922)

  • On marriage and work: "How could I think that June morning of 1923 10 years ago as we sat around the big mahogany table in the Board Room of the Administration Building there in Washington, that just 10 years hence I would be concluding the arrangements with the Mexican Government, which that report then presented was to inaugurate. Just 10 years getting to it. The European War intervened, came too the smashing of my married life, and a tremendous change in me. From an old-fashioned, highly conservative, and unworldly young man, I have changed into—well at least I love my work and I hope have built higher and higher ideals for myself in it. As for the rest in a few years we are gone for always never never to return. Oppressive as that thought is, it is due to our own personal conceit, it is not too dreadful. This world is a delightful place to be alive in, and the privilege of living in it at all, is worth the pains and trials that living necessarily entails" (6/6/1923)
 
 Subjects:  Archaeology. | Aztec art. | Aztec architecture. | Carnegie Institute. | Central America. | Diaries. | Expedition | Mayan hieroglyphic research | South America. | Travel. | United States--Politics and government. | World War I. | World War II. 
 Collection:  Sylvanus Griswold Morley diaries, 1905-1947  (Mss.B.M828)  
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