Our collections exist to be used. When students work directly with primary source materials, historic photographs, and documents that are old or unique, they discover an excitement and passion not generated by textbooks.
Primary source documents can inspire, but they also teach about learning to verify sources, tracking down connections, finding evidence from content and from physical clues.
Special Collections and University Archives collects in the topical area Women, Gender, and Sexuality, including Women’s Back to the Land movement, women linguists focusing on gender issues in language, women who have affected the political process and cultural landscape.
Letters. 1881-1887. 5 letters, 1 document.
These letters were written from Waldport, Oregon.
(A 144)
Papers. 1860-1941. 4 ft.
Kate Stevens Bates was the daughter of the first territorial governor of Washington, Isaac Ingalls Stevens, and an amateur writer in Portland, Oregon. The collection includes her diaries; correspondence concerning family matters, business, and social news; and manuscripts of travel and historical articles by Bates.
(Ax 202)
Letters Received. 1877-1906. 65 letters.
Lillian Blackwood lived in Jacksonville, Oregon. The letters are from Mrs. M. J. Courtney (address unknown), 1877-1880; Richard Blackwood, Tombstone, Arizona, 1880-1881; Kate Murray, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, 1892-1897. They all concern family matters and social news.
(A010)
In the Colbert Hanchett Cannon Papers. 1907-1917. 8 volumes.
Alma Anderson Cannon was married to Colbert Hanchett Cannon, a Eugene, Oregon physician. The collection contains Dr. Cannon\'s daybooks which list patients, diagnoses, treatments, and charges and also contain personal diary entries by Mrs. Cannon.
(Ax 122)
Kitchen Diaries. 1911-1954. 41 volumes.
Mrs. Cloran was the wife of a University of Oregon Professor. The diaries list social engagements, menus, events, and some local news.
(Ax 111)
Papers. 1910-1977. 15 ft.
Carley Dawson was active in the Mary Chess cosmetics business founded in 1932 by her mother, Grace Chess Robinson. She was also an author of three books and an ordained minister of Divine Science. The collection includes Robinson and Chess family correspondence, manuscripts, translations of other authors, poems, scrapbooks, memorabilia, and photographs.
(Ax 759)
In Arvo Hukari Letters to Dorcas Aurelia DeWitt. 1918. 79 letters.
These letters are correspondence from Arvo Hukari, an enlisted soldier at Fort Lewis, Washington, to his fiancée, Dorcas Aurelia DeWitt, from February to November, 1918.
(A 272)
Papers. 1887-1938. 1 box.
Nina Lane Faubion, writer, artist, and amateur mycologist, was the daughter of Senator Harry Lane of Oregon. She was his secretary in Washington, D.C. Her papers include 20 letters to and from Nan Wood Honeyman, 1936-1938, and an unpublished manuscript, "Undiplomatic Relations," describing Congress and official Washington as she saw it between 1915 and 1917. The Faubion papers also contain letters and a scrapbook of Harry Lane.
(Ax 185)
Scrapbook and Letters. 1918-1919. 1 volume. 103 letters.
The scrapbook is about Oregon history, the Whitman controversy, and an article by William MacLeod Raine. The letters are from Ralph A. Fenton and William D. Fenton, World War I soldiers, to their mother, Mrs. W.D. Fenton of Portland, Oregon.
(CA F367, A 37)
Journal and Composition Books. 1839-1873. 3 volumes.
The journal was kept by Cordelia Fuller during and 1873 round-trip journey by train from Three Rivers, Massachusetts, to Montreal, Canada. It describes scenes and towns en route and her traveling companions. The collection also includes two composition books, one from 1853 by Cordelia Fuller and one from 1839 by Hiram Fuller.
(A 39)
In the Walter and Frances Holmes Gerke Papers. 1934-1946. 0.5 cubic feet.
Walter and Frances Holmes Gerke were architects from 1924 to 1964 who founded the Oregon Society of Landscape Architects. The collection includes landscape architectural drawings of Oregon projects and drawings for the Bonneville Power navigation project and the Dammasch State Hospital.
(Coll. 144)
Interview. 1960. 21 pp.
This oral history interview was conducted by Elwood R. Maunder, Forest History Foundation, Inc., about Greeley\'s husband, chief forester with the U.S. Forest Service, 1920-1928.
(CB G819)
In Fear Family Papers. 1865-1931. 3 ft.
Nora B. Green was a Portland, Oregon teacher and spiritualist. The William H. Fear Papers contain correspondence with Nora Green and other items.
(Ax 34)
Autobiography. n.d. 306 pages.
Mrs. Groff Smith was both the daughter and the wife of commissioners in the China Maritime Customs Service. Her autobiography includes comments on Chinese politics and customs, 1890 to 1941.
(CB G 893)
Papers. 1896-1954. 3 ft.
The collection contains the diaries, 1912 to 1954, of Edith Ashmore Hensolt, a librarian and her correspondence, 1896 to 1951. Additional diaries and letters of Edith Hensolt are in the William Ashmore Papers.
(Ax 588)
In Herbert Crombie Howe Papers. 1855-1940. 9 ft.
This collection includes the diaries, 1874 to 1889, and letters, 1874 to 1916, by Lillian Howe, and the diaries, 1860 to 1873, and letters, 1867 to 1877, by Letitia Howe.
(Ax 51)
In William Elwood Kirk Papers. 1854-1938. 1 ft.
The William E. Kirk papers include Eva May Howard\'s correspondence with Kirk before their marriage in 1901, while he was a student, and during her visits with her parents in Idaho between 1916 and 1929. William Kirk was a professor of ancient languages at Willamette University, Salem, Oregon from 1906 to 1937.
(Ax 149)
Diary. 1869. 1 volume.
Eva S. Lesslie was a pupil in Girls High School, New Orleans, Louisiana. Her diary describes events in and out of school.
(A 155)
Architectural Records. 1929-1970. 21 cubic feet.
Elizabeth Lord and Edith (Nina) Schryver designed gardens in both Oregon and Washington. The records include landscaping plans and drawings, correspondence, and other professional material.
(Coll. 098)
Papers. 1903-1927. 2 boxes.
Ellen Condon McCornack was the daughter of Thomas Condon, Oregon geologist and one of the first professors at the University of Oregon. Her papers contain correspondence written while she was trying to find a commercial publisher for her book about her father, Thomas Condon.
(Ax 679)
In Henry F. Misselwitz Papers. Account Book. 1765-1829. 1 vol.
Accounts kept by a New England merchant selling general merchandise such as rum, flour, and salt.
(Ax 357)
Diary, 1877. 1 volume.
Althea Moores, of Salem, Oregon, was a student at Willamette University and graduated in 1877. After graduation she continued to live at home, did housework, took piano lessons, and participated in the social life of Salem. The diary is a fairly detailed recital of events, with little reflection, but provides a description of everyday life in Salem in 1877.
(A 81)
In the Joseph Stanley Pennell Papers. 1924-1961. 5 ft.
Elizabeth Horton Pennell\'s diary and letters written and received by her are included in her husbands papers.
(Ax 194)
Papers. 1945. 1 folder.
Rose Morey Poole (27 May 1880 – 10 July 1963) was an American businesswoman and politician from Klamath Falls, Oregon. She was a Republican who served two terms in the Oregon House of Representatives, representing a large rural district in southern Oregon. She was also a successful businesswoman who owned a number of movie theatres in and around Klamath Falls. Her letters and some photographs comprise this collection.
(Ax 286)
Diary. 1880-1887. 105 pages.
Sarah Porter lived in Aumsville, Oregon.
(A 97)
Genealogical Papers. 1844-1942. 0.5 cubic ft.
Grace Guile Purse was a physician and genealogist. The collection includes correspondence and documents about the Guile and Wishard families and Molly Guile\'s diary about her family\'s overland journey from Missouri to Montana in 1869.
(Coll. 33)
Letters. 1849-1887. 24 letters.
This collection contains Isabella Porter's correspondence with the Porter family, written from Iowa, the Colorado mines, and Oregon. Five of the letters are from Civil War solders in the Ohio Volunteers.
(A 115)
Letter. 1905. 2 pages.
In this letter to Dr. Ella K. Dearborn, Stewart asks for more information about euthanasia, as her father is suffering from cancer.
(CA 1905 Aug. 17)
Watercolors. 339 paintings.
Carrie K. Sweetser was a botanical painter and the wife of the head of the University of Oregon Department of Botany. The paintings are of natural size and record the minutes details of the color and formation of flowers.
(Coll. 237)
Papers. 1885-1918. 3 volumes.
The Laura E. Turner Papers comprise one volume of household account, 1885 to 1913, and two volumes of weather information from Hood River, Oregon, 1892 to 1918.
(A 124)
Letters Received. 1861-1862. 13 letters.
The letters, from John R. Young and Charles Scribner, stationed in or near Arlington, Virginia, with the 24th Regiment, New York Volunteers, during the Civil War, describe the monotony of army life.
(A 125)
In George Browne Van Waters Papers. 1879-1939. 2 ft.
The Van Waters Family lived in Portland, Oregon. The George B. Van Waters Papers include 78 letters from Maud Van Waters to her family and 9 letters from Miriam Van Waters.
(Ax 215)
Diary. 1861-1867. 2 folders.
Jane Mullen Walrad\'s diary contains a description of daily events in and about Jacksonville, Oregon from 1861 to 1867.
(A 128)
Diaries, 1927-1963. 18 volumes.
Pauline Walton\'s diaries are a daily summary of events in Eugene, Oregon from 1879 to 1966.
(Ax 674)
Papers. 1914-1920. 4.5 ft.
Gertrude Bass Warner was the founder of the University of Oregon\'s Museum of Art. The collection includes diaries about trips to Japan, notes on Shinto festivals and shrines, and a manuscript entitled When West Meets East, a guide to Japanese Customs. Links to the various other collections are below, including lantern slides, photos, and faculty papers.
Papers. 1824-1923. 2 folders. 4 volumes.
The Wetherbee Family papers include a memory book by Mary Louisa McIntyre, 1844 to 1849, and one by Abigail and Elvira Robbins, 1824 to 1835.
(A 129)
Papers. 1911-1922. 2.5 ft.
Opal Stanley Whitely was an amateur naturalist who attended the University of Oregon from 1916 to 1918. Her family moved to Walden, Oregon around the time she turned six years old. It was in Walden at around the age of six that she purportedly wrote her controversial nature diary. She also wrote a collection of lectures on nature called, The Fairyland Around Us (Los Angeles, 1918). The collection consists of photographs, correspondence, class notes, personal notes and memoranda, material relating to her Christian Endeavor work, collected printed matter, and books.
(Ax 97)
[Identification of item], Date (if known), Collection Title, Collection Number, Box and Folder number [or photo ID number], Special Collections & University Archives, University of Oregon Libraries, Eugene, Oregon.
Special Collections and University Archives is the primary repository for the University of Oregon’s archives, rare books, historic photographs, and one of the largest historical manuscripts collections in the Pacific Northwest. Our mission is to acquire, preserve, and make available a clearly defined set of primary sources and rare books, reflecting the written, visual, and audio history and culture of Oregon, the Pacific Northwest, and selected aspects of American and world history. Our diverse collections support all types of research, from K–12 education to international scholarship. We strive to play an active and creative role in the teaching, research, and service missions of the University.
Historical Collection Strengths
1501 Kincaid Street
Eugene, OR 97403
P: 541-346-3053
F: 541-346-3485
