Henrietta Page sketchbook of fungi drawings

The Harvard Botany Libraries recently acquired and digitized Henrietta Page’s [Sketchbook of drawings of fungi], volume II. The sketchbook was a gift from the Boston Mycological Club (BMC) where Page was a member and served on the executive committee for a time. She was also a member of the Boston Society of Natural History. The sketchbook mostly describes fungi collected during July and August when Page attended three-week long natural history classes held in Alstead, New Hampshire under the Alstead School of Natural History from 1899-1903. The mycology section was taught by Hollis Webster, secretary and co-founder of the BMC and Harvard graduate (class of 1884); phanerogamic botany by Merritt Lyndon Fernald; ornithology by Ralph Hoffmann; and physiography and biology by William Lusk Webster Field. The school ran from 1899-1904.

The sketchbook was originally unattributed, but Jason Karakehian (BMC archivist) discovered that the sketchbook connects to specimens that are now housed in the fungarium at New York Botanical Garden (NYBG). The specimens were originally part of the Alstead School of Natural history fungarium, which was integrated into the BMC fungarium after the Alstead School’s closing. Jason was able to attribute the sketchbook to Ms. Page by searching the NYBG’s online database of specimens for fungal collections made in Alstead in the years 1900-1903, which yielded a few collections whose labels referred to Henrietta Page by name and referenced specific pages in her sketchbook “Vol. II.”

There are a number of glass plate negatives, prints, and lantern slides of fungi in the BMC archive which were made by Hollis Webster in the 1902 and 1903 sessions of the School. These have been cleaned, organized, placed in archival negative envelopes, and listed in a spreadsheet. The specimens photographed do not appear to match those drawn by Ms. Page, but there is some overlap in taxa.

The sketchbook is a popular new acquisition and has already been used for several classes interested in field notes, women in science, and scientific illustrations.