Wallace Family Papers, American Philosophical Society

Table of contents

Abstract

The Wallace Family Collection documents the professional and personal lives of Anthony F.C. Wallace, anthropologist and ethnohistorian and his father, ethnologist, historian, and folklorist Paul A.W. Wallace. The collection includes correspondence to and from 20th century anthropologists, ethnologists, historians, linguists, and psychiatrists and provides a wealth of resources for the study of technological and social change, American Indians, culture and personality, revitalization movements, the anthropological study of religion, and the cultural and biological bases of behavior.

Anthony Wallace's papers (1920-2000) comprise the bulk of the collection. In addition to Wallace's correspondence, research notes, and drafts, the collection includes Wallace family correspondence and photographs, as well as Wallace's writings from childhood through recent years.

Due to its large size, the finding aid for this subcollection is presented in two parts: Series I-II and Series III-XII.

Paul Wallace's papers (1920-1967), while representing a much smaller portion of the collection, provide rich source materials for the study of northeastern American Indians. The collection includes extensive correspondence with fellow scholars and Indian consultants, interviews with Indians of the Six Nations Reserve in Canada, and notes and photographs collected during his fieldwork among the Indians of New York State, Pennsylvania, and Canada.

Scope & content
Administrative information
Collection inventory
- Series I. Correspondence, 1754-1966
- Series II. Notebooks, n.d.
- Series III. Graphics, 1885-1964

Scope and content

Paul Wallace's academic and professional career is represented by 6.5 linear feet of correspondence, field notes, diaries, and photographs. His personal life is documented in the various Wallace family histories and photograph albums included among the papers of Anthony F. C. Wallace. The material here supplements the Paul Wallace Papers housed at the Pennsylvania State Archives and numerous other repositories, listed below with related materials.

The relatively small size of the Paul A.W. Wallace papers belies their significance within the Wallace Family collection. Because Paul Wallace distributed his papers among several repositories, the APS holds only a portion of his existing papers, but these include some of his most significant correspondence, field notes, and photographs.

Perhaps most importantly, the papers consist largely of manuscripts and extensive and detailed scholarly and personal correspondence, with little routine administrative correspondence. Wallace appears to have weeded out correspondence from publishers, other businesses, and Lebanon Valley College, probably donating the latter to LVC. The APS also may have reduced the bulk of the papers during their initial processing, based on correspondence between David H. Wallace and Whitfield J. Bell, Jr., librarian of the APS when David Wallace donated his father's papers.

Wallace's extensive correspondence with scholars of the American Indian and several American Indians comprises the bulk of the papers. Correspondents include some of the most prominent names in the study of the American Indian such as Frank G. Speck, William Nelson Fenton, Arthur C. Parker, and Carl F. Voegelin, and American Indians such as Edward Ahenakew, Aren Akweks (Ray Fadden), and Jesse Cornplanter, descendant of Cornplanter, Seneca chief. A significant amount of the correspondence relates to Wallace's research on Conrad Weiser, ambassador to the Six Nations in the 1740s and 1750s and Moravian missionaries John Heckewelder and the Muhlenberg family.

Significant correspondence includes that between Wallace and Frank G. Speck (1936-1947, 2 folders), Parker, Arthur C. (1936-1954, 2 folders) William Nelson Fenton (1943-1965, 8 folders), Ray Fadden (1947-1967, 18 folders) and Charles Berwind Montgomery (1935-1942, 28 folders).

The Speck and Fenton correspondence provides insight into the professional yet friendly relationships between Wallace and his colleagues. While relatively brief, this correspondence includes detailed discussions of Speck's and Wallace's ethnological work. The more extensive correspondence with Fenton began during Wallace's work on Conrad Weiser in 1943, when Wallace wrote to William Nelson Fenton at the suggestion of Frank Speck and C. Marius Barbeau. Upon hearing that Wallace planned to write a history of the Six Nations, Fenton advised him to read some of his own works and perhaps focus on one aspect of Six Nations history. Spanning Wallace's professional historical career, the Fenton correspondence includes detailed questions and equally detailed answers on Iroquois history and commentary on Wallace's work.

Wallace's most dependable correspondent was Charles Berwind Montgomery, the leading authority on Schuylkill Valley history at the time. A nephew of Thomas Lynch Montgomery, the former State Librarian of Pennsylvania and curator of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Montgomery served as curator of the Historical Society of Berks County and eventually followed his uncle's path, serving as curator of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. In charmingly informal yet elegant prose, Montgomery and Wallace discussed Pennsylvania history and exchanged stories of their daily lives.

Second only in volume, but perhaps most interesting is the Ray Fadden (Aren Akweks) correspondence. Fadden wrote detailed letters describing people, places, and events on and near the St. Regis Mohawk Reservation, Hogansburg, New York, frequently enclosed photographs and drawings, and expressed opinions on issues of concern to Indians, all of which create an invaluable record of Indian reservation life in the mid 20th century. After Wallace's Mohawk adoption in 1949, the two men frequently addressed each other in letters by their Indian names or as "brother."

The collection also contains extensive notes and photocopies relating to John Heckewelder and Conrad Weiser, several interviews with American Indians, and manuscripts of several Wallace articles. As part of his research on Weiser, Wallace compiled a series of five-year diaries spanning Weiser's life (1715-1760) in which he reconstructed Weiser's life. Diaries for 1715-1739 contain relatively fewer entries, while those from 1740-1759 contain more numerous and detailed entries.

Administrative information

Restrictions

No restrictions.

Provenance

Gift of Anthony F.C. Wallace, 1988 , 1999-2000 and Presented by David H. Wallace, 1967.

Preferred citation

Cite as: Wallace Family Papers, American Philosophical Society.

Processing information

Catalogued by Valerie Anne Lutz, 2003.