Series I consists of Albert C. Peale’s correspondence, spanning from 1868 to 1912 (mostly 1870s-80s) and primarily relates to various federal geological expeditions. His most frequent correspondents include colleagues William Rush Taggart and Charles Richmond, and eventual wife Emilie Wiswell. Letters between Peale and Taggart, the largest single portion of the series, focus on matters of congressional funding for expeditions.
William Rush Taggart, assistant geologist and lawyer, was born on September 4, 1849, in Smithville, Ohio. He obtained a bachelor’s degree from the University of Wooster (Ohio) in 1871. After teaching for a year in Wooster High School, he received an appointment with the United States Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories in the spring of 1872.
He met and befriended his peer Peale sometime before January 1872, the date of his first letter in the collection. From 1872 to 1873, Taggart served as an assistant of geologist Frank H. Bradley (“Prof. B.” in his letters) on the Hayden expedition to Jackson Hole, Wyoming Territory. The present-day Taggart Lake, in Grand Teton National Park, is named for him.
Taggart returned to Wooster to study law in the office of Charles M. Yocum, then obtained a law degree from the University of Michigan in 1875. After practicing law with Yocum for six months, Taggart was hired as an assistant and stenographer for the solicitor of the Pennsylvania Company in Salem, Ohio. He succeeded as solicitor two years later. During this time, he frequently corresponded with Peale and collected photographs and artifacts from his friend’s expeditions. Taggart married Margaret Waterworth (d. 1916) on September 13, 1877.
He later joined the law firm of Dillon and Swain in New York City (1887-91), with clients such as the Pennsylvania Company, Western Union Telegraph Company, and several railroads (1891-1911). He ultimately became vice president and general counsel for Western Union and a director for American Telegraph and Cable Company (1911-22). Taggart died on September 28, 1922, at his summer home in New Canaan, Connecticut, of complications from bronchitis.
Charles Richmond, ornithologist and museum curator, was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 1868. Shortly after his mother’s death in 1880, he moved with his family to Washington, D.C., where Smithsonian bird curator Robert Ridgway mentored his early ornithological interest. Richmond left school to become a messenger for the USGS in 1885. In 1888, he collected birds on a USGS expedition to Montana. He also accompanied his brother and three friends on a horticultural and ornithological expedition to Nicaragua and Costa Rica in 1892-93, donating the resulting bird specimens to the United States National Museum. He obtained employment at the museum for most of the remainder of his life, serving as night watchman (1893-94), assistant curator of birds (1894-1918), and associate curator of birds (1918-32). He married Louise H. Seville in 1898, and died in Washington, D.C., in 1932.
Series II spans from 1900 to 1909 and contains the correspondence of Edwin Kirk and other geologists; most numerous are letters from Frank Springer to Kirk relating mostly to rock formations. Charles Wachsmuth is another common correspondent with both Kirk and Springer. The second series also includes some correspondence of Edward Oscar Ulrich relating to the Geological Survey of Kentucky (1888-1893).
Frank Springer, paleontologist, was born in 1848 in Wapello, Iowa. He attended law school at the University of Iowa and was admitted to the bar in 1869. He married Josephine M. Bishop in 1876. Perhaps influenced by fellow Iowa attorney Charles Wachsmuth, Springer developed an interest in paleontology and wrote the Revision of the Palæocrinoidea between 1879 and 1886, published by Philadelphia’s Academy of Natural Sciences; the first of many such studies he would author. He later served as regent of the Museum of New Mexico, and died in East Las Vegas, New Mexico, in 1927.
Edward Oscar Ulrich, geologist, was born in 1857 in Cincinnati, and grew up mostly in Covington, Kentucky. He joined the Cincinnati Society of Natural History in 1877, serving as their curator of paleontology from 1878-79. After two years as superintendent of a silver and lead prospect in Boulder, Colorado, Ulrich returned to Kentucky. Between 1882 and 1884 he wrote and illustrated six papers on fossil bryozoans, and soon after received contracts to do similar work for the Illinois Geological Survey (published 1890) and the Minnesota Geological and Natural History Survey (published 1895). He also attained a temporary position with the USGS in 1897. He moved to Washington, D.C., upon becoming a permanent USGS geologist in 1901. He continued to publish geological works and do field surveys in the Mississippi Valley, the Appalachians, and other states, retiring in 1932. He died in 1944 in Washington.
Charles Wachsmuth, paleontologist and lawyer, was born in 1829 in Hanover, Germany. After an early career as a lawyer, Wachsmuth emigrated to the United States and settled in Burlington, Iowa. He developed an interest in the area’s crinoid fossils, and traveled to Europe to study fossils in the British Museum in the 1865. Upon returning, he collected fossils to send to the museum and collaborated with Frank Springer to publish several studies on crinoids. Wachsmuth died in 1896.
Series III contains miscellaneous letters and memorabilia (c. 1820s-1940s) of the Peale family. These include poems written by Albert, items from Albert’s great-uncle Titian Ramsay Peale, a sketch of a Kentucky warbler sent to Charles Willson Peale (either Albert’s father or his illustrious great-grandfather) from Ohio, postcards, photographs, and a lock of hair from Rachel Brewer Peale (Albert's great-grandmother).
Series IV is made up of bound volumes from A. C. Peale or his mother Harriet Peale. From Albert, seven diaries (the earliest c. 1865-69, the other six 1872-77), one daybook covering a teenage Albert's observations of weather and Civil War military drills (1864), two university lecture notebooks (c. 1868-70), and one undated sketchbook. From Harriet, a receipt (recipe) book, mostly undated but containing a pamphlet from 1878.
The first diary is undated but covers A. C. Peale's visit to Washington, D.C., sometime during President Andrew Johnson's administration (1865-69). The remaining diaries cover various western expeditions in which Peale participated, mostly in the present states of Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah. The diary from May-August 1873 (to the creeks of Castle Peek) includes several notable references to expedition photographer William Henry Jackson. The final diary (1877, to western Wyoming) especially contains many accounts of interactions with Shosoni Indians and also encounters with Bannacks; the diary from July-November 1874 (to the branches of the Gunnison River) also contain references to nearby Indian inhabitants.
Edwin Kirk assembled Peale’s papers, then leaving them and his own papers to his wife Page upon his death. They passed to the Kirks’ daughter and granddaughter before the latter donated them to the American Philosophical Society in 2007.