University of Pennsylvania Finding Aids

The Elizabeth T. Miller papers, part of the Caroline F. Schimmel Collection of Women in the American Wilderness, contain documentation of Miller’s 1940 travels through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras, along with some later correspondence and recollections of the trip. Miller, a commercial artist from Baltimore, Maryland, undertook this journey with her cousin, sculptor and archaeologist Benjamin Turner Kurtz; the acclaimed operatic singer Carolyn Long; and photographer John Henry Coon. The majority of the collection consists of scrapbooks documenting various Mayan ruins and archaeological sites in these countries. Essays published in the Bulletin of the Natural History Society of Maryland (and a few unpublished pieces) written by Miller and Kurtz are also included, as are miscellaneous photos, notes, letters, publications and documents relating to this trip.