The land that is now the Morris Arboretum at the University of Pennsylvania, the official Arboretum of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, was previously the private estate of Quaker siblings John Thompson Morris (1847-1915) and Lydia Thompson Morris (1849-1932). Bequeathed to the University of Pennsylvania in 1933, it was part of the University's Botany Department until, in 1975, it was established as a separate Interdisciplinary Resource Center. The Morris Arboretum at the University of Pennsylvania records, 1933-2013, include the office files of former directors, various administrative and financial records, correspondence, press clippings about the Arboretum, membership reports, programs and ephemera, publicity photographs.
Dr. Edgar T. Wherry (1885-1982) was a mineralogist and botanist who specialized in ferns. He was a professor of botany at the University of Pennsylvania from 1930-1955, and in 1932 he was appointed ecologist to the Morris Arboretum. The Dr. Edgar T. Wherry botanical lantern slides, circa 1920s-1976, consist of dozens of lantern slides (primarily hand-painted photographs) created by Dr. Edgar T. Wherry depicting botanical specimens, some from the Morris Arboretum and others from locations throughout the world. There is also one slide script from a 1976 lecture on Phlox in the collection.