Bills, 1927 - 1944

The Charles B. Davenport Collection is particulary rich in photographs, both family and scientific. Davenport began visiting the Cold Spring Harbor area in the 1890s, and its environs are the background of many of the photographs. There are nine photographs of Alexander Agassiz's Newport, Rhode Island laboratory, six of which are dated 1893 and three of which are undated, but which are likely of the same date. Of particular note in the collection are cabinet photographs, mostly of scientists, to include Asa Gray, F.L. Washburn, Mathias Duval, Sir Michael Foster, Winfield S. Nickerson, Seitaro Goto, Karl Pearson, Louis Agassiz, Elie Metchnikoff (Nobelist), Herbert Haviland Field, J. B. Lippincott, Fridjtof Nansen, Sir Edwin Ray Lankester, Shozaburo Watase, and Franz Keibel; some of these photographs are signed.

Among the scientists pictured in group photographs and casual photographs are Alexander Graham Bell, Alfred Francis Blakeslee, Reginald G. Harris, Clyde Fisher, Eugen Fischer, Irving Fisher, John Harvey Kellogg, George Howard Parker, Alfred G. Mayor, E. L. Mark, and Thomas Hunt Morgan. The group photograph of Davenport, Irving Fisher, Morgan, and Bell was taken on or around 10 April 1915, at the same time as a photograph of three of them that was used as the frontispiece to the issue of the Eugenical News of August 1929.

The oldest substantive materials in the collection are the school copybooks of Charles B. Davenport's parents. His mother describes a May 1855 lecture by Charles Sumner and an 1858 lecture by Rembrandt Peale. Among the other Davenport family materials are some relating to Rev. William E. Davenport, one of the founders of the Italian Settlement House in Brooklyn.

Charles B. Davenport's correspondence in this collection is not extensive, but it does contain material of note, to include Reginald G. Harris's application to study at Cold Spring Harbor in 1916. In 1884 Davenport corresponded with ornithologist Owen Durfee, and there are two very long letters from him, with bird lists. Davenport's Biological Laboratory carbon letter book dates from 1900 to 1901, and includes letters to Eugene G. Blackford, Franklin W. Hooper, and Blakeslee (p. 152), among others. Davenport collected postcards from scientists, most of which date from the late 1890s to 1905; those with substantive messages have been separated from the mass and placed with correspondence. Postcard correspondents include F.A. Bather, William Healey Dall, Wilhelm Roux, Yves Delage, Kakichi Mitsukuri, Friedrich Zschokke, Bashford Dean, Carl I. Cori, Sir S.F. Harmer, Charles Robert Richet (Nobelist), Tine Tammes, Charles Emerson Beecher, John Stanley Gardiner, Kamakichi Kishinouye, Paul Pelseneer, Richard Wolfgang Semon, Sir John Arthur Thomson, C. Wesenberg-Lund, Jacob Reighard, Samuel Garman, Goto, and Jon Alfred Hansen Mjoen.

Both Charles and Gertrude Davenport owned property around the Town of Oyster Bay, and some of this property is now owned by the Cold Spring Harbor laboratory. Included in the house and land records are records of property owned by Gertrude Davenport in Kansas, with voluminous correspondence from her agent, Noble I. Nesbitt.

Scientific memoramilia collected by Davenport includes the postcards, zoological drawings, and autographs. Among the artists are Mark, Parker, Field, Watase, Nickerson, Henry Baldwin Ward, William E. Ritter, Herbert Spencer Jennings, John H. Gerould, Mayor, A.S. Packard, and J.S. Kingsley. The autograph collection includes a letter which is signed twice by Alexander Von Humboldt. Most of the autographs are in an unbound book dating from 1909 to 1912; included are the signatures of Oscar Riddle, Erich Tschermak, De Vries, and Theophilus S. Painter.

There were with the papers a great number of old deeds, insurance and property indentures that seem to have no relationship to Davenport or to properties that he and his wife owned. These have been filed as part of memorabilia.

Jane Davenport Harris de Tomasi was her parents executrix, and the materials and correspondence for this role have been integrated into the collection. The supporting material chiefly consists of obituaries of Charles B. Davenport.