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The Helen Buchanan papers contain incoming correspondence, financial records, ephemera, and photographs related to the life of Helen Buchanan (later Jones) in the early 20th century. Much of the correspondence is from her friend Juliana Conover, who discussed women's issues and her life in Princeton, New Jersey, during World War I, and from Buchanan's suitor and eventual husband, Walter McKnown Jones, who wrote about medical treatments he experienced and life on his coffee plantation in Puerto Rico.

The Helen Buchanan papers contain 5 linear feet of incoming correspondence, financial records, photographs, printed items, ephemera, and writings pertaining to the life of Helen Buchanan (later Jones) in the early 20th century. Much of the correspondence is from her friend Juliana Conover, who discussed women's issues and her life in Princeton, New Jersey, during World War I, and from Buchanan's suitor and eventual husband, Walter McKnown Jones, who wrote about medical treatments he experienced and life on his coffee plantation in Puerto Rico.

The Correspondence series comprises the bulk of the collection and contains incoming letters and postcards addressed to Buchanan between 1906 and 1919, while she lived at Ayrshire Farm in Upperville, Virginia; Washington, D. C.; Rome, Italy; and Hacienda Limon (near Villalba, Puerto Rico).

Helen's friend Juliana Conover wrote 258 letters advising her much younger friend on love and courtship, providing updates on her life in Princeton, New Jersey, and commenting on current events. In one early letter, she shared her horror at the recent Titanic tragedy (April 16, 1912). Much of Conover's correspondence concerns Helen's courtship with and engagement to Walter McKnown Jones; she often reported on his health, and she supported the relationship despite misgivings on the part of Helen's father. Conover dispensed candid advice on a variety of topics, including intimacy and birth control (April 12, 1916). Along with sending personal updates and news of friends in Princeton, she sometimes mentioned the war and the families whose sons served in the military (May 14, 1917). After the war, she worked with the American Library Association's Library War Service at Camp Dix, New Jersey.

Walter McKnown Jones, Helen's friend, fiancé, and (later) husband, wrote approximately 200 letters to her between 1914 and 1919, largely concerning their courtship and engagement. Early in their acquaintance, he spent considerable time attending to his ill health and undergoing medical treatments. After recovering in the United States, he returned to his coffee plantation in Puerto Rico, where he described his work and efforts to sell coffee; these included trips to New York City and other destinations throughout the late 1910s. Many of his later communications with Helen are telegrams reporting his current location and attempting to make plans to meet his wife.

The Family Correspondence subseries holds letters from many different writers, including several regular correspondents. James A. Buchanan, Helen's father, wrote 45 letters between 1906 and 1919, often regarding her financial situation and family news. He described his European travels, which included witnessing a review of German military troops in Berlin (September 2, 1908) and visiting a military cemetery in Brest, France, where war casualties and influenza epidemic victims were buried (March 4, 1919). John and Francis Buchanan, Helen's brothers, shared stories of their academic and athletic experiences. John wrote about Yale's stringent entry requirements and his preparation for entrance exams (August 14, 1911). Other family correspondence includes letters from aunts, cousins, and extended family members, who told Helen about their lives in various New York cities and in Ilchester, Maryland.

Much of the Friends Correspondence subseries consists of letters by Etta Dunham de Viti de Marco and her daughter Etta, with whom Helen lived while studying in Rome, Italy. The elder Etta frequently discussed her work with Italy's Montessori movement, and her daughter provided Helen with updates on her life at school in Ascot, England. Etta Dunham di Viti de Marco shared her opinions of the war and expressed her desire for U.S. intervention (July 4, 1915). Nora Davis Farrar, the wife of Frederick Percival Farrar, an English chaplain to King George V, wrote 44 letters between 1908 and 1914, describing her life in Pennsylvania and British Columbia. A variety of other correspondents related news of their lives in various European countries and in the United States. Several postcards depict black-and-white views of "Il Cerro" in Italy.

The Financial Records series (140 items) consists of bank receipts, notifications of charitable donations, and additional receipts for clothing, books, and household items, dated from 1908-1918.

The Photographs and Negatives series includes approximately 50 individual portraits of Helen Buchanan's friends, family members, homes, and properties. One photograph album contains 375 pictures taken between 1928 and 1935, depicting scenes from family vacations in Canada and people, dogs, and horses. Many photographs show men and women in equestrian competitions, and some later images depict Ayrshire Farm in Upperville, Virginia.

A "Theatre Record" chronicles Helen's theatrical excursions in Washington, D.C., between December 25, 1907, and December 25, 1908. She recorded her opinions of productions and players. Programs are pasted and laid into the volume.

The Printed Items and Ephemera series consists of calling cards, picture postcards, pamphlets, newspaper clippings, and other items. Ephemera includes pamphlets and printed letters related to the Washington, D.C. chapter of the Drama League of America; postcards and programs related to the Societa Romana della Caccia alla Volpe; and other materials. Twenty-nine picture postcards from Italy and Puerto Rico are present.

The collection contains approximately 15 Writings and Fragments. These are poems, a manuscript speech on the play Candida, an inventory of articles owned by Helen, and other items.

The Terry family papers contain correspondence, documents, and other items pertaining to the family of James Terry, Jr., who was curator of the Department of Archaeology and Ethnology at the American Museum of Natural History in the early 1890s. The materials concern Terry's lawsuit against the museum regarding his private collections, his archaeological career, and life on the Terry family farm in the 1830s.

The Terry family papers (0.75 linear feet) contain correspondence, documents, and other items pertaining to pertaining to the family of James Terry, Jr., who was curator of the Department of Archaeology and Ethnology at the American Museum of Natural History in the early 1890s.

The James Terry, Sr., Diary contains 27 pages of daily entries about Terry's farm and the progress of his crops between July 17, 1838, and September 16, 1838. The diary entries are followed by 7 pages of notes about the 1838 hay, rye, and turnip harvests, with additional references to wheat and corn. One note refers to crops planted the following spring (March 21, 1839).

Items pertaining to James Terry, Jr. , are divided into 5 subseries. The Correspondence and Documents subseries (235 items) contains letters, legal documents, and financial records related to James Terry's archaeological career, as well as drafts of letters written by Terry. From 1879 to 1891, Terry received letters from archaeologists and other professionals, such as Albert S. Bickmore and R. P. Whitefield of the American Museum of Natural History, about his work and personal collections. Correspondents also shared news related to the American Museum of Natural History and to archaeological discoveries. Receipts pertain to items shipped to the museum.

Items dated after 1891 relate to Terry's work at the American Museum of Natural History, including an agreement regarding the museum's acquisition of, and payment for, Terry's personal collection of artifacts (June 5, 1891). Correspondence from Terry's time as a curator at the museum (1891-1894) concerns the museum's internal affairs and relationships between Terry and members of the Board of Trustees; one group of letters pertains to the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893 (July-August 1893). Terry received notice of his dismissal on March 21, 1894. From 1897-1898, Terry was involved in a lawsuit against the museum, and the collection contains court documents, correspondence, and financial records related to the case; the suit was settled on June 22, 1898, when the museum paid Terry $18,000. Five receipts dated 1906-1908 concern Elmira's Terry's purchases of household items. Some items were once collected in a letter book; a partial table of contents is housed in Oversize Manuscripts.

The James Terry, Jr., Diary contains 86 pages of entries from June 2, 1891-January 26, 1894, concerning Terry's work at the American Museum of Natural History. Pages 4-8 have a list of items "liable to moth destruction," including each artifact's catalog number and a brief note about their condition. The final pages contain notes related to Terry's curatorship and a copied letter from Terry to the archaeologist Marshall H. Saville (December 9, 1893). Terry's Datebook (January 1, 1883-December 31, 1833) contains notes about his daily activities. The final pages hold records of Terry's expenses.

Drafts and Reports (14 items) relate to Terry's work at the American Natural History Museum, the museum's history and collections, archaeological expeditions, and the early history of Santa Barbara, California. The series contains formal and draft reports, as well as notes.

Newspaper Clippings (50 items) include groups of items related to a scandal involving the pastor of a Congregational church in Terryville, Connecticut; to a controversy raised by German archaeologist Max Ohnefalsch-Richter about the integrity of Luigi Palma di Cesnola's collection of Cypriot artifacts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City; to controversial behavior by Columbia University president Seth Low; to a meteorite that Lieutenant Robert E. Peary transported from the Greenland to New York in October 1897; and to novelist John R. Musick's alleged plagiarism. Individual clippings concern topics such as Yale College, a dispute between Harvard and Princeton constituents (related to a poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes), and religion in New England.

The James Terry, Jr., Ephemera and Realia subseries (14 items) contains business and calling cards, promotional material for the American Natural History Museum, a black-and-white reproduction of a painting of African-American agricultural laborers, metal nameplates and decorative plates, and an engraving of the Worcester Town Hall pasted onto a block of wood.

The Terry Family series is made up of 2 subseries. The Terry Family Account Book contains 11 pages of financial records related to the estate of George Terry (April 9, 1889-June 7, 1890). An additional page of accounts is laid into the volume, and 3 newspaper obituaries for Terry are pasted into the front cover. A tax bill is affixed to the final page of accounts.

The Terry Family Photographs (90 items) include formal and informal portraits and photographs of scenery. One photograph of a summer home called "Rocklawn" is mounted onto a card with a calendar for the year 1899. Another photograph shows the post exchange at Thule (now Qaanaaq), Greenland, in September 1953.

The Stevens family papers consist of correspondence, photographs, and newspaper clippings related to the courtship of Frederic W. Stevens and Edith de Gueldry Twining and to their son Neil's experiences as a medical volunteer in France during the First World War.

The Stevens family papers (1 linear foot) consist of correspondence, photographs, and newspaper clippings related to Frederic W. Stevens and Edith de Gueldry Twining and to their son Neil, who was a medical volunteer in France during the First World War.

The 5 earliest letters in the Correspondence series (around 152 items total), written in November 1884, are addressed to Julia Twining and express condolences about her father's recent death. These are followed by a lengthy series of letters from Frederic W. Stevens to his fiancée, Edith de Gueldry Twining, prior to their wedding. He wrote daily from July to September 1903, giving his future wife updates on his daily life and on mutual friend, and his later letters include a series written in the summer and early autumn of 1906, while Edith lived at her family's summer home in Clinton, New York. These letters focus on domestic affairs and on the state of the couple's household in Morristown, New Jersey.

Neil Campbell Stevens wrote 5 letters from Europe during the World War I era, including 4 concerning his service in French hospitals during the opening and closing months of the war. In a letter postmarked 1914, he related his experiences treating French and German patients while working as a medical aide at the Val-de-Grâce military hospital.

Other items include a letter by a British soldier about military protocol affecting "this Ulster business," which was rioting centered around the Irish Home Rule controversy (April 20, 1914); a letter of thanks from Paul Salembier, a soldier with the 145th French Infantry who received a care package from the Stevens family (March 28, 1916); and a printed letter to Edith Stevens concerning the relocation of her house (November 22, 1928). The series also has 3 letters in French.

The Postcards series (33 items) contains both blank cards and cards with short messages. The majority of the items depict scenes from France, including painted landscapes as well as photographs related to World War I. French general Joseph Joffre is the subject of several photographic postcards, and some show damage done to Senlis, France, and other scenes from the western front.

A large number of Photographs (c. 120, plus 1 photograph album) portray France during World War I, and also family vacations to Niagara Falls and other lakeside destinations. Several of the war-era photographs show members of the ambulance corps, 3 showcase a bullet-strewn Model T, and others present camouflaged military installations, guns, soldiers, and scenery from the western front. Other peacetime material consists of unlabeled portraits, a picture of Barbara Stevens on a tennis court, and a photograph album containing pictures of a family vacation near a lake.

The Identity Papers series consists of 2 items. One is Neil C. Stevens's passport, and the other is his identity paper for the Hôpital Militaire du Val-de-Grâce. Both include photographs of Stevens.

The Newspaper Clippings series contains 53 clippings from The New York Times and The New York Tribune, which document several aspects of World War I. Topics include the outbreak of war, the official declaration of war by the United States, food prices on the home front, submarine attacks on American shipping, and maps of suspected military movements in both the western and eastern fronts. Other items are a political cartoon showing Napoleon chastising the Germans for their plans to invade Eastern Europe, and a report on the return of Neil Stevens from his first three months in France. Two clippings, dated April 18 and 20, 1914, relate to "The Plot Against Ulster" and the controversy over Irish Home Rule.

The Receipts series (3 items) includes a letter concerning the payment of $7 for an article printed in The Independent (March 2, 1895), a receipt for a case of tobacco shipped to Neil Stevens during his time in France (November 21, 1914), and a receipt for a donation from Barbara and Alice Stevens to the Charité Maternelle de Paris (March 5, 1917).

Among the items in the Ephemera series (11 items) are 3 calling cards, 1 invitation, a solicitation for donations to the War Children's Relief Fund, a pamphlet about Yosemite National Park, and a broadside advertising the Morristown Committee Third Liberty Loan.

Notes and Genealogy (7 items) include notes on the history of the Twining family and a typed biographical sketch of Sutherland Douglas Twining (1835-1918) with manuscript notes.