University of Pennsylvania Finding Aids

In 1896 the University of Pennsylvania Museum sponsored its first expedition to Russia. The Museum sent Zelia Nuttall (now remembered mainly for her work in the area of Mexican studies) as its representative on a trip to establish cordial relations and a system of exchanges and cooperation, and to obtain archaeological and ethnological specimens by gift or exchange. Nuttall traveled to Moscow, Kiev, Troitzkoi, Rostov, Nijni-Novgorod, and Riga. She also attended ceremonies for the coronation of Nicholas II and there acquired commemorative prints which she donated to the Museum and to Mrs. Hearst. The collection consists mainly of correspondence from Nuttall to William Pepper and Sara Yorke Stevenson, inventories of objects acquired, and images collected at the Pan-Russian Industrial and Art Exhibition at Nijni-Novgorod (modern Gorki).

Yves Abrioux (1949-) and Gianni Burattoni (1947-) joined forces for much of the 1990s as partners who created art and installations based on Burattoni’s artistic background and Abrioux’s background as a professor of English literature and a specialist in the history and theory of gardens and landscape. This collection contains articles, project files and publicity from Abrioux and Burattoni’s work together from 1990 to 1997.

The Wyn Ritchie Evans papers include correspondence, writings, photographs, and personal papers that shed light on her connection to the arts scene and to Herman Sachs, her endeavors as a professional writer, and her life with Ray Evans.

This album contains copy prints of several photos, along with their negatives, depicting World War I-era France.

An oversize volume comprising the contracts and receipts of payment for the construction of the Wrightsville to York Railroad line spanning one year from 1836 to 1837.

W.R. Harrison was a publisher's representative for A. S. Barnes & Co. and Mather, Case, Tiffany, & Burnham, who sold maps and textbooks to public and private schools and booksellers. This collection consists of a journal kept from October 14, 1841, to February 20, 1844, by W. R. Harrison as well as several items originally laid into the volume, including bills and receipts, a letter, and the lyrics to a few songs.

During the Great Depression President Franklin D. Roosevelt developed New Deal programs to return the country to work through relief projects. The most popular of these was the Works Progress Administration because it provided work for so many Americans. Large numbers were put to work building bridges, roads, public buildings, public parks and airports with nominal salaries subsidized by the federal government. In addition, tens of thousands of artists were funded to create murals and sculpture for public buildings, write plays and music and perform their work for an arts-hungry public. Between 1935 and 1942, the University Museum co-sponsored(with institutions such as the Fairmount Park Commission and the Pennsylvania Commission for the Fine Arts) at least eight Works Progress Administration projects as part of the State-wide Museum Assistance Program. Employee salaries for the WPA/University Museum projects were paid by the WPA; equipment, space, supplies, technical aid, and specimens were provided by the University Museum.

The Ward G auxiliary was a group of women who met periodically to discuss the needs of children being treated in the children’s ward of the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. These reports contain vivid narratives relating the circumstances of individual children and their families and the work of the department and its staff to provide social and nursing services to young patients in their homes.

Materials, including administrative records and minutes; staff information; project files; publications; slides and audio recordings from presentations and events; and reference materials. Collection documents the activities of a coordinating committee created by the Southeastern Region of the Pennsylvania Department of Health to maintain communication between government agencies and local women’s activist organizations focusing on health issues and spun off as an independent organization in 1978. Also includes information on the professional activities of the committee’s director, JoAnne Fischer Wolf, who was special consultant to the governor on women and health.

This collection is composed of one volume of photos taken in India by a member of the Women's Auxiliary Corps (India), W.A.C. (I), in 1945. A majority of the photographs capture local sights, mostly in Dagshai, Delhi, and New Dehli.

This collection contains records relating to the Woman's Hospital of Philadelphia. Materials include historical accounts, administrative records, board minutes, annual reports, correspondence, and photographs.

The Wistar and Horner Museum was originally founded as the Wistar Museum in the early 19th century by Caspar Wistar, chair of the Department of Anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania School Of Medicine. In 1818, shortly before his death, Wistar appointed William Edmonds Horner, Dean of the Medical Faculty and professor of Anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania, as curator of the Wistar Museum. At that time, the combined collections of Wistar and Horner became known as the Wistar and Horner Museum. Dr. Joseph Leidy succeeded Horner as curator of the museum in 1847, and contributed hundreds of anatomical, botanical, and animal specimens to the museum collections. The Wistar and Horner Museum records date from 1822 to 1865, and consist of materials relating to museum collections, finances, funding, and curatorial activities; as well as Horner’s dissecting class at the University of Pennsylvania. The collection documents the evolution, management, finances, and curatorial and collecting activities of a university museum.

The papers of Wilton W. Blancké document his life as an educator and author. A strong, vocal proponent for a foreign language curriculum in public education, Blancké wrote several articles on the subject. He also penned numerous letters to editors of various publications espousing the view that the study of foreign language contributes to an international understanding.

Wilma Heston began buying chapbooks in Peshawar’s Bazaar of the Storytellers (Qissa Khwani Bazaar) in 1982. The chapbooks were initially intended to provide texts for Pashto verse narratives that were sung, recorded and then sold in audio-cassette form.

William Wister Haines (1908-1989) was an American author, screenwriter, and playwright, most famous for his novels Slim and High Tension, which depicted working-class protagonists during the Great Depression, and Command Decision, a play and novel depicting the final stages of World War II. This collection includes material related to his literary work, especially in the form of drafts of novels, short stories, essays and articles, screenplays and television scripts, and plays.

The Rev. William Smith (1727-1803) was the first Provost of the College of Philadelphia (now the University of Pennsylvania). In addition to his teaching duties, Smith was an Anglican clergyman in Philadelphia and active in Pennsylvania politics in support of the Penn family prior to the American Revolution. The papers primarily document Smith's public and political activities from 1753 to 1775.

Personal and professional papers of William Smith, the University of Pennsylvania's first provost, covering the years 1755 to 1803.

Dr. William S. Huber (1865-1909) was a dentist in Lebanon, Pennsylvania who graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Medical and Dental Schools. This collection contains Huber's student lecture notes recorded between February 1885 and March 1888.

William Romaine Newbold (1865-1926) was an American philosopher who served on faculty at the University of Pennsylvania from 1907 to 1926. Teaching both Latin and Philosophy, Newbold is perhaps best known for his work delving into antiquarian mysteries. This collection contains material from two pieces of scholarship by Newbold during his time at the University of Pennsylvania.

William R. Mathews (1893-1969) was a journalist, newspaper editor and publisher who corresponded extensively with John Foster Dulles (1888-1959), a politician who served as a United States Senator and United States Secretary of State. This collection represents years of correspondence between these two men, with occasional notes to or from one of their wives. The letters demonstrate Dulles and Mathews' friendship and mutual respect, as they discuss the political and military events that occurred between 1941 and 1957.

William Robertson Coe II was born in 1926 in New York City. Dr. Coe trained as an anthropologist and archaeologist at the University of Pennsylvania (BA 1950, MA 1953, and Ph. D 1958). He joined the faculty of the Department of Anthropology in 1959 and the Penn Museum as assistant curator in the same year. Coe conducted early excavations in Belize, Bolivia, and El Salvador and later directed excavations at Tayasal and Quirigua in Guatemala, but is best known for his long-term commitment with the Museum’s Tikal Project in Guatemala from 1956-1969. He took over the directorship of the Tikal field operations in 1963. His meticulous archaeological recording skills culminated in his monumental achievement, publication in 1990 of the six-volume “Tikal Report 14,” one of the most significant archaeological reports ever. Coe received the Guatemalan government’s highest honor, “The Order of the Quetzal,” in 1969 and the Drexel Medal from the Penn Museum in 1991. He was also known as a superb teacher of Mesoamerican Archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania. He retired from the University in 1987. He died in 2009 at the age of 82. The William R. Coe II collection of personal papers spans the period from 1949-1969. It contains materials related to his early field research, articles and publications, prior to his extensive work in Tikal, which is housed with the Tikal Project records, photographs, and publications. The collection consists of 2 archival boxes of material, with a primary focus on Nohoch Ek, British Honduras, an early expedition conducted as an undergraduate student along with his brother Michael Coe and also on William Coe’s University of Pennsylvania master’s thesis on Piedras Negras, Guatemala. Notable ephemera within the collection include his personal state of Pennsylvania TIKAL license plate and the “Order of the Quetzal” medal, along with Guatemalan news clippings about the award.

The collection documents Pepper’s role in expanding the University of Pennsylvania in the 19th century, his contributions to the medical profession, and his activism in Philadelphia. Primarily comprising correspondence, the collection covers Pepper’s life from a student at the University of Pennsylvania to his death 54 years later.

William Nickerson Bates (1867-1949) was a professor of Greek Language and Literature at the University of Pennsylvania from 1895 to 1939. He wrote primarily on Attic tragedy, including two major volumes on Euripides and Sophocles, the manuscripts for which can be found in this collection. The volumes, Euripides, a student of Human Nature and Sophocles serve to acquaint the modern reader (one with little or no knowledge of ancient Greek) with the original meaning of the plays since, as Bates stated, no work had theretofore been published for such readers that dealt directly with the original Greek texts.

William N. Bates (1867-1949) was born and educated in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Bates curated the Mediterranean Section of the Penn Museum from 1904 to 1911. In 1940, the University of Pennsylvania awarded him an honorary doctorate. The William N. Bates curatorial subgroup consists of two folders of general correspondence from 1904 to 1915.

The William Meredith collection of Philadelphia theatrical commentaries dates from December 1852 to January 1957 and contains 119 longhand commentaries on theatrical performances written either by William Morris Meredith (1799-1873), a Philadelphia lawyer and politician, or his son, William Keppele Meredith.