University of Pennsylvania Finding Aids

The Akhenaten Temple Project was the first computer project assumed by the University of Pennsylvania Museum. It was proposed in 1965 by Ray Winfield Smith, and in 1966 he began the project with the aid of IBM’s nascent computer technology. The IBM computer was abandoned in 1976. This collection spans Ray Winfield Smith’s entire involvement as director of the project 1968-1971, and begins the career of Dr. Donald B. Redford who acted as a consultant in 1971 and has been director since 1972. The records contain papers and photographs relating to the foundation of the Akhenaten Temple Project, and are divided into seven series: Financial; Correspondence and Reports; Publications and Publicity; Project Negatives; Photographs; Drawings; Misc.

Consists of 15 boxes of Albert Croll Baugh’s professional papers, including correspondence, research materials, a catalog of the book collection he donated to the University of Pennsylvania libraries, and reproductions of various medieval manuscripts. The correspondence is professional and overwhelmingly relates to Baugh’s research. The research materials consist primarily of notes, unpublished article reviews, reprints of articles, and newspaper clippings, and make up the greater bulk of the collection. These materials cover Middle English, French and Anglo-Latin literature and literary history in the twelfth through sixteenth centuries. Specific topics covered in the research materials include Arthurian legends, Chaucer, Middle English language (including spelling, grammar and punctuation) and literature (especially romances, plays and lyric works), Piers Plowman, and the concept of the table dormant, as well as the teaching of English and the editing of medieval texts. The catalog records Baugh’s extensive personal research library and can additionally be found on microfilm, along with various medieval manuscripts on microfilm. The bulk of the manuscript reproductions are, however, in photograph, facsimile or photocopied form. These manuscripts are primarily in Middle English (with a few in Latin) and include various transcriptions of the Ancren riwle (a 13th century text of rules for anchoresses, one version of which Baugh edited and then published in 1956), two versions of Piers Plowman, (the B and C texts), various English public records, and miscellaneous other Middle English works.

Allan Wayne Solomonow (born 1937) is a Jewish peace activist who was active in New York City and the San Francisco Bay area from the 1970s through the 2010s. His particular concern was Middle East peace, especially the long-standing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This collection documents Solomonow's life's work and primarily comprise his professional papers related to the Jewish peace community as well as collected secondary material that informed his thinking.

This collection contains correspondence and administrative records supplementing the main collection of records, focusing on the 1980s and 1990s, with detailed records on committee activities and publications. Several officers of the AMS figure prominently in the collection. The supplementary records overlap chronologically and should be used in conjunction with Ms. Coll. 221, American Musicological Society Records.

This collection consists of manuscripts and papers relating primarily to seveententh and eighteenth century Ireland and Great Britain formerly owned by A.C. Elias, a literary scholar who wrote extensively on Jonathan Swift and his circle.

Arthur Hobson Quinn (1875-1960) was a professor and dean of English and History at the University of Pennsylvania and an internationally recognized authority on the history of American drama. This collection contains material representative of Quinn’s entire professional life: correspondence, manuscripts of books and articles, lecture notes, reviews of contemporary plays, his collection of playbills and libretti, and material related to his research on Edgar Allan Poe and the American realist playwright James A. Herne.

Atha Tehon (1926-2012) was a children's book designer and art director at Dial Books for Young Readers for thirty years and a freelance designer. This collection documents Tehon's life and career in the field of children's book publishing through correspondence, professional papers, project files on children's books, artwork, and awards.

August Mencken (1889-1967) was an American civil engineer and author. This collection comprises August Mencken’s correspondence regarding his brother, H.L. Mencken, his research and work on a scale model of the Confederate cruiser Alabama, and miscellaneous collected writings from friends and colleagues.

A. Mitchell Palmer was a Democrat politician from Pennsylvania who served as Congressman, Alien Property Custodian and Attorney General between 1908 and 1921. This collection covers, to a limited degree, each of these three stages of Palmer’s career. It includes photographs, correspondence, and administrative documentation relating to Palmer’s political campaigns, his support of president Woodrow Wilson, and his involvement with organizations such as the Chemical Foundation, especially during his appointment as Alien Property Custodian.

Linton Satterthwaite, a professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania and Curator of the American Section of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, conducted three trips to Caracol, Belize in the 1950s to investigate a previously unknown site of Maya culture. While his primary interest was in Maya inscriptions and chronology, his journeys to Caracol yielded artifacts for the Museum, including twenty-six vessels of the early classic period, nine vessels of the late period, Stela 11, a new "giant glyph" altar, and the bottom portion of Stela 3. The Caracol expedition collection consists of 16 boxes of correspondence, field notes and notes on individual stela, altars, and stones, glyph decipherment and chronology data, information for publication, and photographs and drawings including contact sheets and photographs from Caracol, Benque Viejo, and Cayo X. Satterthwaite organized and catalogued the photographs according to the type of film used, field numbers, and monument number. The collection also contains three file boxes of card notes to the photographs and a few pieces of oversized material. Satterthwaite's "The Monuments and Inscriptions of Caracol, Belize" with co-author Carl Beetz, was published after his death. The publication materials relate to his instructions and notes for publication and Beetz' collection of Satterthwaite's monument notes for the book.

The collection contains very little original Pound material, although there are six folders of photocopied correspondence from him to various correspondents, primarily from the period when Pound was institutionalized at St. Elizabeth's Hospital. Correspondents include Pound's wife Dorothy and an early girlfriend Mary Moore. There are 22 folders of correspondence to Gatter relating to the early life of Ezra Pound. The balance of the collection comprises Gatter's research material on the life of Ezra Pound, including some printed material and photographs.

Carlludwig Franck was an architect, architectural historian, and independent scholar in history and the life sciences. The collection consists of bound typescripts or carbons for mostly unpublished nonfiction works. Some include graphs, drawings, photographs, etc.

The records of the excavations at Chalchuapa, El Salvador include correspondence, administrative records, field notes, photographs, manuscripts and reports. The bulk of these materials originate from the 1954 excavation by William R. Coe and the 1966 analysis by Robert J. Sharer, as well as the 1969-1970 re-excavations.

Charles William Blum, Jr. (1925-1991), an artist known for magical realism, lived and worked in New York; San Miguel, Mexico; and Spain. His papers, dating from 1925 to 1988, document his personal life through letters, journals, photographs and memorabilia. In particular, Blum's papers cover numerous topics including his work as an artist; his relationships with Robert Davison and Salvatore Saraceno; his opinions on love, romance and homosexuality; expatriate life in San Miguel de Allende in Mexico; and his opinions on the literary, theatrical, and modern dance scenes of the 1950s.

Founded in 1907, the Charlotte Cushman Club was originally intended to provide respectable lodgings for actresses appearing in Philadelphia theaters. In the years of World War II the Club ceased to provide residential services, becoming a favorite gathering place of theater lovers as well as of the many actresses and actors visiting the city with their touring companies. The Charlotte Cushman Club Records offer insight into the activities, the administration, and the membership of the Club during the whole life of the organization, until its closure in 1998. The collection also includes part of the holdings of the former Club’s museum and library.

The Clara and Rudolf Kirk collection of William Dean Howells material consists of literary and visual materials by or about William Dean Howells, an American author, playwright, and literary critic. It was compiled by Clara and Rudolf Kirk, who were scholars studying Howells, circa 1940-1963. The collection includes essays and reviews written by or about Howells, correspondence and newspaper clippings by or regarding Howells, six scrapbooks about Howells' life and career, and other miscellaneous materials.

Corneille McCarn Rucker, an aspiring poet, was raised in Nashville, Tennessee and Hawaii before attending Vanderbilt University. She was the first woman to publish in The Fugitive, an influential poetry journal. It appears that despite this success, Corneille, in general, had a difficult time publishing many of her poems. This collection documents the lively social life and literary aspirations of a well-educated young woman in the early 20th century. Corneille McCarn Rucker memorialized her life in an extremely narrative and vivid fashion through letters, diaries, writings, and scrapbooks.

Curtis W. Davis (1928-1986) was a television producer who planned to publish a biography of the orchestral conductor Leopold Stokowski (1882-1977). The biography remained unfinished at the time of Davis' death. This collection consists of his research materials, notes, correspondence, and drafts of the planned biography.

This collection contains twenty-one letters from Professor Daniel Hoffman (1923-2013), former US Poet Laureate, to Professor Norman Kelvin (1924-2014), dating from 1950 to 2012. These letters document the friendship between Kelvin and Hoffman, their careers, and their personal lives.

Personal papers of business executive and philanthropist David J. Mahoney. The bulk of the materials comprise correspondence from 1951 to 2000, including letters from Richard Nixon, Norton Simon, William Safire, and Vernon Jordan; writings from 1965 to 1999, including two books written by Mahoney: Confessions of a Street Smart Manager (1988) with Richard Conarroe and The Longevity Strategy: How to Live to 100 Using the Brain-Body Connection (1998) with Richard Restak, M.D.; and events covering the years 1968 to 1998, such as the Horatio Alger Award, which Mahoney won in 1977, and the Bilderburg Conference in both 1981 and 1982. Also available are newspaper clippings and publicity materials focusing on Mahoney as a society figure and businessman, media such as VHS tapes and DVD’s, books, photographs, and award plaques and medals.

David Rockwell Goddard (1908-1985) was a plant physiologist, educator, and provost of the University of Pennsylvania. The collection includes papers related to Goddard's work on several panels, including the Life Sciences Panel; the Commission on Narcotics and Drug Addiction; the Pesticide Panel of the Federal Council for Science and Technology; and the National Academy of Sciences Advisory Committee on the USSR and Eastern Europe. Materials include reports, memoranda, newsletters, pamphlets, meetings minutes and newspaper clippings.

The Walt Whitman Bridge is a single-level, seven-lane suspension bridge reaching across the Delaware River from Philadelphia to Gloucester City in Camden County, New Jersey. Construction on the bridge began in 1953, and the bridge was opened to traffic in May 1967. The naming of the bridge was highly controversial and the Delaware River Port Authority's records document the support and criticism of selecting Walt Whitman as the person for whom the bridge was named. The bulk of the collection consists of letters to the Delaware River Port Authority from concerned New Jersey and Philadelphia area citizens, but researchers will also find Delaware River Port Authority meeting records, clippings, and an essay related to the naming of the Walt Whitman Bridge.

Desmond Meiring (born 1924) is the pen name of Desmond Rice, a Kenyan-born author of more than a dozen works. The collection contains manuscripts for four of Meiring's works, as well as a letter to Richard Simon of Simon & Schuster containing revisions to The Wall of Glass.