Frontiers of Exploration

Album of beautiful seaweeds, 1860-1870. Ms. Coll. 1150

We believe that this album of beautiful seaweeds was created by a woman on vacation in the 1860s.  We know that the seaweeds were collected in Torquay, England, and we know that they are, indeed, beautiful!

Photograph, publication, and itinerary documenting travel to Guatemala in the Elizabeth T. Miller papers, 1928-1960, undated. Ms. Coll. 1265

Elizabeth Turner Miller (1911-1985) was a commercial artist, an amateur archaeologist, and a traveler.  With her cousin, Benjamin Turner Kurtz, Miller traveled to a number of ancient Mayan sites in Mexico, as well as to Guatemala and Honduras, in 1940.  From her trip to Guatemala, this is a photograph of her, probably with Kurtz, beside an enormous Ceiba tree in Copan as well as an article she co-wrote with Kurtz which includes the same photograph.

Diary documenting a three month journey from England to Jerusalem and Egypt, Edith Mary Mellor travel diary, 1934-1935. Ms. Coll. 1111

Edith Mary Mellor (1890-1976) was a British teacher who later transcribed books into Braille for the National Library for the Blind.  From 1934 to 1935, she took a trip to Jerusalem and Egypt.  From her descriptions, photographs, watercolors, and ephemera, one gets the impression that she truly relished her adventure.  Check out the hand drawn maps!

Jessie Graham Flower, Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Lost River Trail; illustrated (Philadelphia: Henry Altemus Co., c1924), from the Caroline F. Schimmel Fiction Collection of Women in the American Wilderness. Schimmel Fiction 1690

Bessie Marchant, The secret of the Everglades : a story of adventure in Florida (Rahway, N.J.: Mershon Co., [between 1902 and 1905?]), from the Caroline F. Schimmel Fiction Collection of Women in the American Wilderness. Schimmel Fiction 3059

Lizzie W. Champney, Three Vassar girls at home : a holiday trip of three college girls through the south and west; illustrated by "Champ" and others (Boston: Estes and Lauriat, 1888), from the Caroline F. Schimmel Fiction Collection of Women in the American Wilderness. Schimmel Fiction 907

These three novels are examples from the fiction component of the Caroline F. Schimmel Collection of Women in the American Wilderness.  In series books marketed to girls in the late 19th and early 20th century, authors developed themes of adventure and exploration by showing  women and girls on adventures such as riding “through the forests and mountains of the rugged state of Washington,” paddling with alligators in the Everglades, and camping on the Yellowstone.