The first journal, "Diary of a Trip to England & Scotland in the Summer of 1912" documents a three-month trip (6/22-9/23) that Amelia and Philip Calvert took while attending the Second International Congress of Entomology. Given the numerous references to "P," it appears that Amelia maintained most if not all of this volume. The journal is remarkable for its variety of modes of transportation: the narrative begins with the transatlantic voyage from Philadelphia to Liverpool aboard a steamer (the S.S. Merion), and includes transport by sailboat, rail, carriage, auto, and funicular. Calvert also furnishes numerous descriptions of European towns and cities, architecture, people, dress, history, weather, and sightseeing of religious and cultural institutions. Notably, the journal includes occasional illustrations and ephemera such as advertisements, receipts, bills, and even a peacock feather (280).
 
The second journal, "Diary of Trip to Europe 1929" follows much the same structure. Once again, it provides an account of a several months travel (7/12-10/2) associated with work, this time a visit to the Zoologists Institute at Freiburg. The couple travels from New York to Antwerp by steamer (the S.S. Lapland). Alongside notes concerning sightseeing—and illustrations and ephemera—Calvert furnishes some comparative observations that might interest twentieth century historians. For example, she writes, "While there are many automobiles and trucks on the streets of Brussels, there is not yet the density of traffic to be seen in Philadelphia" (7/23/1929).

Amelia Smith Calvert maintained two journals of European trips taken in the summer of 1912 and 1929. Although both trips appear to coincide with scientific conferences, Calvert dedicates most of her entries to enthusiastic observations of sightseeing in the United Kingdom, Holland, Belgium, Germany, and Italy. These volumes may interest researchers exploring early-twentieth-century science and European travel.
 
The first journal, "Diary of a Trip to England & Scotland in the Summer of 1912" documents a three-month trip (6/22-9/23) that Amelia and Philip Calvert took while attending the Second International Congress of Entomology. Given the numerous references to "P," it appears that Amelia maintained most if not all of this volume. The journal is remarkable for its variety of modes of transportation: the narrative begins with the transatlantic voyage from Philadelphia to Liverpool aboard a steamer (the S.S. Merion), and includes transport by sailboat, rail, carriage, auto, and funicular. Calvert also furnishes numerous descriptions of European towns and cities, architecture, people, dress, history, weather, and sightseeing of religious and cultural institutions. Notably, the journal includes occasional illustrations and ephemera such as advertisements, receipts, bills, and even a peacock feather (280).
 
The second journal, "Diary of Trip to Europe 1929" follows much the same structure. Once again, it provides an account of a several months travel (7/12-10/2) associated with work, this time a visit to the Zoologists Institute at Freiburg. The couple travels from New York to Antwerp by steamer (the S.S. Lapland). Alongside notes concerning sightseeing—and illustrations and ephemera—Calvert furnishes some comparative observations that might interest twentieth century historians. For example, she writes, "While there are many automobiles and trucks on the streets of Brussels, there is not yet the density of traffic to be seen in Philadelphia" (7/23/1929).

Edmund Beecher Wilson maintained a private journal than traverses much his tenure at Columbia University (12/5/1903-5/24/1928). Wilson includes frank assessments of undergraduate and graduate students, many of whom would become leaders in the fields of biology, genetics, and zoology. For example, he writes of Rebecca Lancefield—who would become a leading microbiologist—"good on the whole, faulty in spots" (5/26/1917). Other prominent graduate students include A. Franklin Shull, Jack Schultz, Hermann Muller, Calvin Bridges, Alfred Sturtevant, and Curt Stern (for whom APS possesses two diaries). Researchers interested in the history of science, education, and the research university will find this volume particularly useful.
 

Contrary to its title, "Sigma Xi lecture tour, 1953" includes entries between 10/14-11/22/1952, shortly after his election to the American Philosophical Society. Contained in a Spiral Stenographer's Notebook (with loose pages until the 11/12 entry), this notebook provides a granular account—often down to the hour—of his travels, meetings, lectures, and seminars with specifics accounts of people, places, and universities. Notably, Stern regularly evaluates audience attendance and engagement, and names individuals with institutional affiliations. Occasionally, he judges institutional priorities. For example, of LSU he writes, "Big campus: Spanish moss and architecture. Money assigned to enlarging stadium instead of library" (10/15/1952). And, while he tends to focus on higher education, occasionally, surrounding communities permeate his observations. For example, in his LSU entry, Stern also records segregation, adding, "road past unpainted negro houses--very small, no basement" (10/15/1952).
 
A second, unbound volume from a decade later provides a detailed account of a two-week trip to the Soviet Union. Maintained between 5/13-6/2/1963, "U.S.S.R Exchange Visit" documents Stern's travels, meetings, seminars, and sightseeing. Although most of the entries are dedicated to his genetics research, Stern also notes visits to various cultural sites and landmarks, including: the Kremlin, in whose mausoleum he writes "Lenin's face yellowish as for wax with light making it glow from inside" (5/16/1963)
 
Sverdlovsk Square, which he describes as "early-19th century Versailles-like park and castle," (5/16/1963), and the Ruski Museum, in which he describes Soviet realism as "wheat factories, sturdy healthy people, statue of men [forging] sword into plough" (5/29/1963). Stern includes at least one brief account of religious practice (or lack thereof) in 1960s Soviet Union, writing: "Morning visit to the churches in the Kremlin…They are all museums but kept in the spirit of religious places. No atheistic propaganda" (5/25/1963).

Curt Stern Papers include two diaries written after his inauguration into the American Philosophical Society and move to UC Berkeley. The first documents a national lecture tour taken in the fall of 1952 and the second, from the spring of 1963, describe an exchange visit to the Soviet Union. Read in tandem, these two volumes may interest researchers investigating Stern's work in genetics and his scholarly networks, segregation and the Jim Crow South, the post-war research university, and the Soviet Union in the Cold War.
 
Contrary to its title, "Sigma Xi lecture tour, 1953" includes entries between 10/14-11/22/1952, shortly after his election to the American Philosophical Society. Contained in a Spiral Stenographer's Notebook (with loose pages until the 11/12 entry), this notebook provides a granular account—often down to the hour—of his travels, meetings, lectures, and seminars with specifics accounts of people, places, and universities. Notably, Stern regularly evaluates audience attendance and engagement, and names individuals with institutional affiliations. Occasionally, he judges institutional priorities. For example, of LSU he writes, "Big campus: Spanish moss and architecture. Money assigned to enlarging stadium instead of library" (10/15/1952). And, while he tends to focus on higher education, occasionally, surrounding communities permeate his observations. For example, in his LSU entry, Stern also records segregation, adding, "road past unpainted negro houses--very small, no basement" (10/15/1952).
 
A second, unbound volume from a decade later provides a detailed account of a two-week trip to the Soviet Union. Maintained between 5/13-6/2/1963, "U.S.S.R Exchange Visit" documents Stern's travels, meetings, seminars, and sightseeing. Although most of the entries are dedicated to his genetics research, Stern also notes visits to various cultural sites and landmarks, including: the Kremlin, in whose mausoleum he writes "Lenin's face yellowish as for wax with light making it glow from inside" (5/16/1963)
 
Sverdlovsk Square, which he describes as "early-19th century Versailles-like park and castle," (5/16/1963), and the Ruski Museum, in which he describes Soviet realism as "wheat factories, sturdy healthy people, statue of men [forging] sword into plough" (5/29/1963). Stern includes at least one brief account of religious practice (or lack thereof) in 1960s Soviet Union, writing: "Morning visit to the churches in the Kremlin…They are all museums but kept in the spirit of religious places. No atheistic propaganda" (5/25/1963).

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).
 

Warner's diaries provide an intimate record of his far-flung travels. Alongside visits to zoological and mineralogical collections, Warner patronizes numerous places of worship, for which he often provides sketches of murals and architectural features. (His most impressive color illustrations begin around March 1863). Notably, he visits a Jewish synagogue in the Netherlands (10/13/1862) and a mosque in the Middle East (3/31/1865). He copies verses from a tombstone (9/8/1862), and when he tours the Egyptian pyramids, he records hieroglyphics (4/26/1865). He encloses descriptions of natural scenes—e.g. the Wetterhorn (8/31/1862) and Rhone Glacier (9/4/1862)—and also urban spaces, including a locomotive works in Amsterdam (1/26/1863), a foundry in Greenock (1/30/1863), a prison in York (4/7/1863), a gypsy settlement in Romania (6/13/1865), and even an early account of the Grand Kremlin Palace (8/2/1868).
 
Throughout those travels, Warner recollects his native Pennsylvania to draw evocative geographic and social comparisons. For example, he equates a town outside Belgrade to Burlington on the Delaware (6/9/1865). Upon meeting a foreman at machine shop, he compares the conditions of the poor in America and Germany (8/25/1862). Of particular note, he compares the governor of Nazareth to a "Philadelphia negro" (4/15/1865).
 
At various points in his travels, Warner is compelled to confront U.S. domestic affairs, most especially the Civil War. For example, traveling by rail in Germany in late-1865, he writes, "Met in the [train] car Mr. Joseph Kommer, Lincoln Logan Co., Illinois, a few months back to Germany, now on his way home via Hamburg. He had served in the Northern Army
 
related many things respecting the war and was a good union man" (11/8/1865). Several years later, he visits a castle where he notes a "revolver presented to the King by President Lincoln" (7/9/1868). Although Warner rarely discusses politics directly, he registers his own political activities and sympathies. For example, he attends a "Peace Society" (5/19/1863), a "temperance tea" (9/15/1863), and a lecture on "dwellings for workingmen" (1/6/1866). He records at least one conversation about U.S. nativist movements, particularly the Astor Place Riots, writing, "Met an Irishman who had been in the U.S. some years ago. He doubted whether the Irish, in New York had been incited—as a clan, especially—to take part in the late New York riots, and on account of jealousy of the blacks as competitors for work—he was further opposed to Mr. Lincoln's emancipation edict" (8/18/1863). In another prescient entry, he records an exchange with a Polish miller about poll taxes. "A miller spoke to me, among other subjects, of Poland," Warner writes. "He said Austria and Prussia assist to subjugate Poland, because 'they are all tyrants together.' Of our country, he said there would soon be poll tax" (9/14/1864).
 
When it comes to the topic of slavery, Warner reveals abolitionist sympathies via ephemera. He encloses a newspaper clipping from "Aborigine Protection Society," after which he remarks on the emigration of freed slaves to Liberia (5/20/1863), and encloses another clipping entitled "Negro Emancipation" (6/17/1863).
 
Scholars of nineteenth century material culture will be richly rewarded by the diaries. Alongside hand-drawn maps of buildings, cities, and architectural features, Warner encloses numerous newspaper clippings (e.g. (1/10/1863), engravings (9/27/1864), advertisements (7/9/1865), and theatrical programs (10/6/1865). While the majority of those materials are in English, some ephemera—and Warner's own entries—are in German, French, or Italian.

With 55 volumes spanning 7/8/1862-11/23/1872, the John Warner diaries provide a detailed account of his time abroad (1862-1868) and travels throughout Europe. Although many entries are devoted to talks and lectures (mostly pertaining to zoology), Warner proves also a studious observer of people, cultures, and cultural and religious institutions, which he records through numerous sketches and ephemera. In fact, these volumes present a wealth of research opportunities for scholars of material culture, thanks to Warner's curation of nineteenth-century newspaper clippings, advertisements, programs, and personal illustrations.
 
Warner's diaries provide an intimate record of his far-flung travels. Alongside visits to zoological and mineralogical collections, Warner patronizes numerous places of worship, for which he often provides sketches of murals and architectural features. (His most impressive color illustrations begin around March 1863). Notably, he visits a Jewish synagogue in the Netherlands (10/13/1862) and a mosque in the Middle East (3/31/1865). He copies verses from a tombstone (9/8/1862), and when he tours the Egyptian pyramids, he records hieroglyphics (4/26/1865). He encloses descriptions of natural scenes—e.g. the Wetterhorn (8/31/1862) and Rhone Glacier (9/4/1862)—and also urban spaces, including a locomotive works in Amsterdam (1/26/1863), a foundry in Greenock (1/30/1863), a prison in York (4/7/1863), a gypsy settlement in Romania (6/13/1865), and even an early account of the Grand Kremlin Palace (8/2/1868).
 
Throughout those travels, Warner recollects his native Pennsylvania to draw evocative geographic and social comparisons. For example, he equates a town outside Belgrade to Burlington on the Delaware (6/9/1865). Upon meeting a foreman at machine shop, he compares the conditions of the poor in America and Germany (8/25/1862). Of particular note, he compares the governor of Nazareth to a "Philadelphia negro" (4/15/1865).
 
At various points in his travels, Warner is compelled to confront U.S. domestic affairs, most especially the Civil War. For example, traveling by rail in Germany in late-1865, he writes, "Met in the [train] car Mr. Joseph Kommer, Lincoln Logan Co., Illinois, a few months back to Germany, now on his way home via Hamburg. He had served in the Northern Army
 
related many things respecting the war and was a good union man" (11/8/1865). Several years later, he visits a castle where he notes a "revolver presented to the King by President Lincoln" (7/9/1868). Although Warner rarely discusses politics directly, he registers his own political activities and sympathies. For example, he attends a "Peace Society" (5/19/1863), a "temperance tea" (9/15/1863), and a lecture on "dwellings for workingmen" (1/6/1866). He records at least one conversation about U.S. nativist movements, particularly the Astor Place Riots, writing, "Met an Irishman who had been in the U.S. some years ago. He doubted whether the Irish, in New York had been incited—as a clan, especially—to take part in the late New York riots, and on account of jealousy of the blacks as competitors for work—he was further opposed to Mr. Lincoln's emancipation edict" (8/18/1863). In another prescient entry, he records an exchange with a Polish miller about poll taxes. "A miller spoke to me, among other subjects, of Poland," Warner writes. "He said Austria and Prussia assist to subjugate Poland, because 'they are all tyrants together.' Of our country, he said there would soon be poll tax" (9/14/1864).
 
When it comes to the topic of slavery, Warner reveals abolitionist sympathies via ephemera. He encloses a newspaper clipping from "Aborigine Protection Society," after which he remarks on the emigration of freed slaves to Liberia (5/20/1863), and encloses another clipping entitled "Negro Emancipation" (6/17/1863).
 
Scholars of nineteenth century material culture will be richly rewarded by the diaries. Alongside hand-drawn maps of buildings, cities, and architectural features, Warner encloses numerous newspaper clippings (e.g. (1/10/1863), engravings (9/27/1864), advertisements (7/9/1865), and theatrical programs (10/6/1865). While the majority of those materials are in English, some ephemera—and Warner's own entries—are in German, French, or Italian.

Davenport employed a host of different types of notebooks to record entries. Those include: Standard Diary, A Line a Day, Red Star Diary, Nassau Diary, Loesen Engagement Book, Daily Reminder, Vaughan's, New Census, Marquette, and various loosely bound notebooks. While he records weather conditions (often with temperatures), meetings, and accounts throughout those records, his earliest accounts proffer his most personal and narrative entries.
 
Between 1878-84, Davenport writes regularly about his religious upbringing, studies, work at the Polytechnic Institute, and political observations. Religion features prominently in Davenport's youth: In addition to regularly attending church and Sunday School, he records notes and thoughts about particular readings and sermons (consider for example 1/6/1878, 1/29/1882, and 2/16/1882). In a 1/22/1882 entry, he even notes the visit of a Mormon woman from Utah, which he later marks as a "principal personal event."
 
Alongside notes about subjects related to studies, Davenport records household chores (7/16/1881), recreational activities (walks, rides, croquet), trips (e.g. a summer visit to the New Hampshire White Mountains in 1884), cultural excursions (the American Museum of Natural History on 1/6/1879), personal readings (1/3/1881), and some of the first evidence of his interest in surveying (illustrations of a chapel hall, 1/2/1880). The young Davenport also demonstrated an unusual curiosity in current affairs and politics. For example, his first journal includes an enthusiastic account of election day (11/5-11/6/1878), and his 1881 diary features several entries dedicated to assassination of President James Garfield and ascension of Chester A. Arthur (9/26-9/30/1881). These early diaries are also some of Davenport's most playful: he self-consciously reflects on diary-writing (2/6-2/7/1878, 1878 memoranda, 1880 front matter, and 9/6/1880) and intersperses doodles to commemorate holidays (12/311878 and 2/22/1879, 5/30/1879, 6/1/1879).
 
Subsequent diaries are less narrative in nature, but illuminating their own right. Davenport maintains notebooks on subject area interests, including a journal entitled "Ornithology 1885" which includes migration charts from the American Ornithologists' Union," notebooks dedicated to topology, mineralogy, budding and regeneration, and research on the human brain (1885-1892), and various notebooks dedicated to the study of human inheritance. As Davenport's career begins to take off around the fin de siecle, he includes more notes related to lectures, seminars, student meetings, dinners, and lab work. His marriage to Gertrude Crotty surfaces in the five-year diary spanning 1899-1905 via birthday reminders (2/28/1899), city outings (9/11/1900), and notes related to their child, Janet (1/2/1899).
 
Researchers will find that Davenport's early-twentieth century diaries provide insights into his burgeoning career in genetics. In addition to notebooks pertaining to expeditions to the Biloxi, Mississippi (March 1901), Europe (September-October 1902 and 1909-10), and Mt. Washington (August 1908), a 1903 notebook features notes on "Topics of Inheritance" and allusions to work on a laboratory—almost certainly his Carnegie-funded lab in Cold Spring Harbor. Nevertheless, many of his entries could easily be confused with those of a farmer: Davenport records notes to purchase chicken feed, coal, grain, and rat poison, and a 1909-10 diary features numerous and meticulous illustrations of fish (October 1909 – March 1910). Concurrently, Davenport notes numerous meetings with leaders in genetics, botany, and zoology, including George Harrison Shull, Herbert Spencer Jennings, Edward Bagnall Poulton, Albert Francis Blakeslee, and Edmund Beecher Wilson. Perhaps most significantly, beginning around 1911, Davenport starts to reference Mary Harriman, who would later fund his work in eugenics.
 
Eugenics surface most directly in Davenport's diaries maintained throughout the 1910s and 1920s. Alongside regular visits to the "Harriman House," Davenport notes the opening of his laboratory ("Bio Lab Opens," 6/26/1912) and his increasing commitments to the field of eugenics. That includes notes on "Dwarfs of Lamar Lamar" (11/14/1911), reminders of "families to study (e.g. "chemists," "artists," "statesmen," "vocalists," and "naval" in his 1913 memoranda), and an account of "negative" and "positive eugenics" (January 1920). One notebook (dated "February 12") is less a diary than a set of eugenics lecture notes, including a "Field worker's guide" that describes the consequences of segregation, limitations of the law of heredity, and pages allocated for recording hair color, skin color, stature, mental activity, feeble-mindedness (e.g. pauperism, crime, insanity, criminality).
 
Between 1914-1930, Davenport makes numerous trips to Europe to study eugenics (including (1914, 1922, and 1929). His 1914 trip is explicitly labeled "Eugenics in Holland" (10/22). A series of loose, typed pages entitled "Diary of Trip to Europe, September 13 to October 31, 1922," includes notes on a lecture entitled "Das Mutations Problem" in Vienna (9/25) and his participation in the Second Commission of Eugenics through which he "Voted to admit Germany and all other, properly qualified countries to the Commission" (10/9). Perhaps most remarkably, at the end of that trip, Davenport records a meeting with Charles Darwin's son, Leonard: "At Lewes was met by Darwin and taken to his home in Sussex. Private conference on eugenical matters" (10/20).
 
That engagement carries home, where, in a 1930 diary, he includes a series of relevant newspaper clippings: "Racial related to a Racial Integrity Bill Signed" in Richmond, Virginia (3/14), "Extols African Marriage" (3/4), "Senate Refuses to Shelve Harris Quota Bill: Senate Again Rejects Motion by Glass aimed at Salvaging National origins Clause" (4/24), and "Dr. Adler Closes Psychology Clinic: Noted Viennese Scientist Declared Target of Medical Center Critics" (5/31). In some loose pages associated with that diary, Davenport compares a colleague (simply identified as "Gordon") to the Croatian-American geneticist Milislav Demerec: While Davenport finds Gordon "industrious and fertile in ideas," he adds that he is "not so brilliant as Demerec" (6/3).
 
Davenport's remaining diaries (1931-1944) mostly focus on various trips, with occasional mentions of the outbreak of World War II. The early-1930s feature a series of notebooks dedicated to travel in the Americas, including a "Western Trip" and "Trip to the West by Automobile" (which collectively span July-October 1931), as well as trips to Bermuda, Mexico, and Nova Scotia. The Nova Scotia trip is noteworthy because Davenport explicitly notes an encounter with Russian-American geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky. In his late-1930s journals, World War II surfaces, if only briefly. In a diary spanning 1937-39, Davenport notes Germany's seizure of Poland (9/1/1939) and Great Britain's subsequent declaration of war (9/3/1939). Curiously, he also alludes to a "Cox: Atomic Nuclear" in multiple entries of June and July in his 1940 diary.
 
Finally, the Davenport diaries are noteworthy for their idiosyncrasies: these include at least one volume authored by his wife, and the eclectic range of ephemera include inside and alongside the diaries. In a volume signed "G.L. Davenport"—and bearing numerous allusions to "Charles and Charlie throughout—Gertrude Davenport records a series of entries between 4/1/1905 to 3/16/1913. Of particular interest is her protest of race track gambling (4/19/1908 and 4/23/1908) and the dedication to Carnegie Lab, with a note of an encounter with Andrew Carnegie, who "disappointed the department by not adding to the endowment" (1/3/1910). Alongside accounts of various farm and house work (mending garments, cleaning, and, unusual for a homemaker, making concrete blocks), this diary also notes Gertrude's reading, namely Harper's Monthly and the Century.
 
Across the series 95 diaries, Davenport includes a host of rich and sometimes peculiar ephemera: a letter, dated March 20, 1901 enclosed in an 1889 notebook, an image of Robert E. Lee (7/13/1905), a doodle of a family crest (3/17/1910), pamphlets related to ornithology (1920) and major snowstorm (2/2/1930), membership cards for the Arts Center of New York (1925) and the American Museum of Natural History (1943), Davenport's 1922 and 1925 passports, programs for a meeting of the Eugenics Research Association (6/3/1930) and a symposium on "Theory and Development" at Davenport's home (3/21/1930), train tickets to Washington (9/5/1918 and 7/9/1919), the ferry service between Staten Island and Brooklyn (5/3/1925), and the Long Island Railroad schedule (1927), receipts, deposit slips, and scraps of paper labeled everything from "OBESITY" (8/19/1915) to "Committee on Ways and Means" (1917), and even wooden toothpicks, which Davenport appeared to have used as bookmarks (9/5/1918, 10/31/1918, 3/12/1933, and 5/7/1933).
 
Although Davenport rarely uses his diaries for reflection, his enclosure of ancillary materials reveals his personal networks and popular reading. Throughout the diaries, scholars will discover business and calling cards for William Cohill (1902), Edith Reeves (1911), "Brinkerhoff" (1911), Sidney Ball (1914), "Antipodes" (1914), George Laible (1915), H. Lundborg (1923), Charles Herrman (1925), E.J. Lidbetter (1927), Gebruder Dippe (1930), H.J. Parsen (1933), and Ji-Yen Rikamaru (1937). Davenport also regularly encloses snippets from newspapers, including a piece Russian mogul named M. Rachatnikoff who sought "the improvement of the human race" (12/9/1906), Mary Harriman's purchase of land and sheep (9/25/1911), op-eds on immigration policy (9/9/1915) and access to birth control (1920), an obituary for Dwight Comstock (9/16/1932), and reports of Nassau County budget cuts (11/9/1942).

The Charles Benedict Davenport Papers include 95 diaries—and numerous ancillary materials—spanning 66 years (1878-1944). In fact, the collection traverses Davenport's formative years and adult life, beginning with student notebooks that he maintained at the age of 12 to a five-year diary that culminates with an entry recorded less than two weeks before his death (dated 2/5/1944). Davenport's diaries contain a wealth of material valuable to researchers investigating his personal life, scientific research—especially the field of Eugenics—religion (Congregationalism), politics, and World War II. At least one diary, which spans 4/1/1905 to 3/16/1913, appears to have been maintained by his wife, Gertrude.
 
Davenport employed a host of different types of notebooks to record entries. Those include: Standard Diary, A Line a Day, Red Star Diary, Nassau Diary, Loesen Engagement Book, Daily Reminder, Vaughan's, New Census, Marquette, and various loosely bound notebooks. While he records weather conditions (often with temperatures), meetings, and accounts throughout those records, his earliest accounts proffer his most personal and narrative entries.
 
Between 1878-84, Davenport writes regularly about his religious upbringing, studies, work at the Polytechnic Institute, and political observations. Religion features prominently in Davenport's youth: In addition to regularly attending church and Sunday School, he records notes and thoughts about particular readings and sermons (consider for example 1/6/1878, 1/29/1882, and 2/16/1882). In a 1/22/1882 entry, he even notes the visit of a Mormon woman from Utah, which he later marks as a "principal personal event."
 
Alongside notes about subjects related to studies, Davenport records household chores (7/16/1881), recreational activities (walks, rides, croquet), trips (e.g. a summer visit to the New Hampshire White Mountains in 1884), cultural excursions (the American Museum of Natural History on 1/6/1879), personal readings (1/3/1881), and some of the first evidence of his interest in surveying (illustrations of a chapel hall, 1/2/1880). The young Davenport also demonstrated an unusual curiosity in current affairs and politics. For example, his first journal includes an enthusiastic account of election day (11/5-11/6/1878), and his 1881 diary features several entries dedicated to assassination of President James Garfield and ascension of Chester A. Arthur (9/26-9/30/1881). These early diaries are also some of Davenport's most playful: he self-consciously reflects on diary-writing (2/6-2/7/1878, 1878 memoranda, 1880 front matter, and 9/6/1880) and intersperses doodles to commemorate holidays (12/311878 and 2/22/1879, 5/30/1879, 6/1/1879).
 
Subsequent diaries are less narrative in nature, but illuminating their own right. Davenport maintains notebooks on subject area interests, including a journal entitled "Ornithology 1885" which includes migration charts from the American Ornithologists' Union," notebooks dedicated to topology, mineralogy, budding and regeneration, and research on the human brain (1885-1892), and various notebooks dedicated to the study of human inheritance. As Davenport's career begins to take off around the fin de siecle, he includes more notes related to lectures, seminars, student meetings, dinners, and lab work. His marriage to Gertrude Crotty surfaces in the five-year diary spanning 1899-1905 via birthday reminders (2/28/1899), city outings (9/11/1900), and notes related to their child, Janet (1/2/1899).
 
Researchers will find that Davenport's early-twentieth century diaries provide insights into his burgeoning career in genetics. In addition to notebooks pertaining to expeditions to the Biloxi, Mississippi (March 1901), Europe (September-October 1902 and 1909-10), and Mt. Washington (August 1908), a 1903 notebook features notes on "Topics of Inheritance" and allusions to work on a laboratory—almost certainly his Carnegie-funded lab in Cold Spring Harbor. Nevertheless, many of his entries could easily be confused with those of a farmer: Davenport records notes to purchase chicken feed, coal, grain, and rat poison, and a 1909-10 diary features numerous and meticulous illustrations of fish (October 1909 – March 1910). Concurrently, Davenport notes numerous meetings with leaders in genetics, botany, and zoology, including George Harrison Shull, Herbert Spencer Jennings, Edward Bagnall Poulton, Albert Francis Blakeslee, and Edmund Beecher Wilson. Perhaps most significantly, beginning around 1911, Davenport starts to reference Mary Harriman, who would later fund his work in eugenics.
 
Eugenics surface most directly in Davenport's diaries maintained throughout the 1910s and 1920s. Alongside regular visits to the "Harriman House," Davenport notes the opening of his laboratory ("Bio Lab Opens," 6/26/1912) and his increasing commitments to the field of eugenics. That includes notes on "Dwarfs of Lamar Lamar" (11/14/1911), reminders of "families to study (e.g. "chemists," "artists," "statesmen," "vocalists," and "naval" in his 1913 memoranda), and an account of "negative" and "positive eugenics" (January 1920). One notebook (dated "February 12") is less a diary than a set of eugenics lecture notes, including a "Field worker's guide" that describes the consequences of segregation, limitations of the law of heredity, and pages allocated for recording hair color, skin color, stature, mental activity, feeble-mindedness (e.g. pauperism, crime, insanity, criminality).
 
Between 1914-1930, Davenport makes numerous trips to Europe to study eugenics (including (1914, 1922, and 1929). His 1914 trip is explicitly labeled "Eugenics in Holland" (10/22). A series of loose, typed pages entitled "Diary of Trip to Europe, September 13 to October 31, 1922," includes notes on a lecture entitled "Das Mutations Problem" in Vienna (9/25) and his participation in the Second Commission of Eugenics through which he "Voted to admit Germany and all other, properly qualified countries to the Commission" (10/9). Perhaps most remarkably, at the end of that trip, Davenport records a meeting with Charles Darwin's son, Leonard: "At Lewes was met by Darwin and taken to his home in Sussex. Private conference on eugenical matters" (10/20).
 
That engagement carries home, where, in a 1930 diary, he includes a series of relevant newspaper clippings: "Racial related to a Racial Integrity Bill Signed" in Richmond, Virginia (3/14), "Extols African Marriage" (3/4), "Senate Refuses to Shelve Harris Quota Bill: Senate Again Rejects Motion by Glass aimed at Salvaging National origins Clause" (4/24), and "Dr. Adler Closes Psychology Clinic: Noted Viennese Scientist Declared Target of Medical Center Critics" (5/31). In some loose pages associated with that diary, Davenport compares a colleague (simply identified as "Gordon") to the Croatian-American geneticist Milislav Demerec: While Davenport finds Gordon "industrious and fertile in ideas," he adds that he is "not so brilliant as Demerec" (6/3).
 
Davenport's remaining diaries (1931-1944) mostly focus on various trips, with occasional mentions of the outbreak of World War II. The early-1930s feature a series of notebooks dedicated to travel in the Americas, including a "Western Trip" and "Trip to the West by Automobile" (which collectively span July-October 1931), as well as trips to Bermuda, Mexico, and Nova Scotia. The Nova Scotia trip is noteworthy because Davenport explicitly notes an encounter with Russian-American geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky. In his late-1930s journals, World War II surfaces, if only briefly. In a diary spanning 1937-39, Davenport notes Germany's seizure of Poland (9/1/1939) and Great Britain's subsequent declaration of war (9/3/1939). Curiously, he also alludes to a "Cox: Atomic Nuclear" in multiple entries of June and July in his 1940 diary.
 
Finally, the Davenport diaries are noteworthy for their idiosyncrasies: these include at least one volume authored by his wife, and the eclectic range of ephemera include inside and alongside the diaries. In a volume signed "G.L. Davenport"—and bearing numerous allusions to "Charles and Charlie throughout—Gertrude Davenport records a series of entries between 4/1/1905 to 3/16/1913. Of particular interest is her protest of race track gambling (4/19/1908 and 4/23/1908) and the dedication to Carnegie Lab, with a note of an encounter with Andrew Carnegie, who "disappointed the department by not adding to the endowment" (1/3/1910). Alongside accounts of various farm and house work (mending garments, cleaning, and, unusual for a homemaker, making concrete blocks), this diary also notes Gertrude's reading, namely Harper's Monthly and the Century.
 
Across the series 95 diaries, Davenport includes a host of rich and sometimes peculiar ephemera: a letter, dated March 20, 1901 enclosed in an 1889 notebook, an image of Robert E. Lee (7/13/1905), a doodle of a family crest (3/17/1910), pamphlets related to ornithology (1920) and major snowstorm (2/2/1930), membership cards for the Arts Center of New York (1925) and the American Museum of Natural History (1943), Davenport's 1922 and 1925 passports, programs for a meeting of the Eugenics Research Association (6/3/1930) and a symposium on "Theory and Development" at Davenport's home (3/21/1930), train tickets to Washington (9/5/1918 and 7/9/1919), the ferry service between Staten Island and Brooklyn (5/3/1925), and the Long Island Railroad schedule (1927), receipts, deposit slips, and scraps of paper labeled everything from "OBESITY" (8/19/1915) to "Committee on Ways and Means" (1917), and even wooden toothpicks, which Davenport appeared to have used as bookmarks (9/5/1918, 10/31/1918, 3/12/1933, and 5/7/1933).
 
Although Davenport rarely uses his diaries for reflection, his enclosure of ancillary materials reveals his personal networks and popular reading. Throughout the diaries, scholars will discover business and calling cards for William Cohill (1902), Edith Reeves (1911), "Brinkerhoff" (1911), Sidney Ball (1914), "Antipodes" (1914), George Laible (1915), H. Lundborg (1923), Charles Herrman (1925), E.J. Lidbetter (1927), Gebruder Dippe (1930), H.J. Parsen (1933), and Ji-Yen Rikamaru (1937). Davenport also regularly encloses snippets from newspapers, including a piece Russian mogul named M. Rachatnikoff who sought "the improvement of the human race" (12/9/1906), Mary Harriman's purchase of land and sheep (9/25/1911), op-eds on immigration policy (9/9/1915) and access to birth control (1920), an obituary for Dwight Comstock (9/16/1932), and reports of Nassau County budget cuts (11/9/1942).