Call Number:

Ms. Coll. 690

Repository:

University of Pennsylvania: Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts

Extent:

5 linear feet (11 boxes)

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

Daniel Garrison Brinton papers, 1869-1901, undated, Ms. Coll. 690, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania

Date:

1869-1901, undated (inclusive)

Creator:

Brinton, Daniel G. (Daniel Garrison)

Form:

Maps, Reprographic copies, Photographs, and Drawings (visual works)

Abstract:

Daniel Garrison Brinton (1837-1899) was a Philadelphia surgeon and anthropologist who created, collected, and donated collections of books and manuscripts related to anthropology, colonization of the Americas, and native American linguistics. This collection consists of correspondence, articles, lectures and notes by Daniel Garrison Brinton, as well as collected images and maps.

Daniel Garrison Brinton, born May 13, 1837, graduated from Yale University in 1858 and from the Jefferson Medical College in 1860. Early in his medical career, he served in the Union Army as a surgeon during the American Civil War, working both on the battlefields of Chancellorsville and Gettysburg and as superintendent of hospitals at Quincy and Springfield in Illinois. He continued his career in medicine in Philadelphia until his retirement in 1887 at the age of fifty.

From 1887 until his death on July 31, 1899, Brinton focused his attention on a "wide range of subjects, including mythology and folklore, the ethnography and linguistics of American Indians from South America to the Arctic, the prehistory and physical anthropology of native North America, indigenous American literature and writing systems, among others," (Weeks, page 167). He served as professor of ethnology and archaeology at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia and as professor of archaeology and linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. He was the first professor of anthropology in the United States, presided over the founding of the Penn Museum.

In the last decades of the nineteenth century, he assembled an impressive working collection of books, scholarly journals, manuscripts, linguistic materials, and artifacts related to Native American languages and cultures, with a particular emphasis on Mesoamerica. This working collection enabled Brinton's prolific scholarly output, which helped to define the emerging discipline of anthropology in the transitional period between nineteenth-century universalist theories and the twentieth-century cultural relativism ushered in by Franz Boas.

Works cited:

Weeks, John M. "The Daniel Garrison Brinton Collection," The Penn Libraries Collections at 250 (online exhibit: http://www.library.upenn.edu/exhibits/rbm/at250/anthropology/jw.pdf).

This collection consists of correspondence, articles, lectures and notes by Daniel Garrison Brinton, as well as collected images and maps; and is arranged in eight series: I. Correspondence, II. Biographical materials, III. Writings, IV. Notes and notebooks, V. Writings by others, VI. Newspaper clippings, VII. Images, and VIII. Maps.

The correspondence, arranged alphabetically, mainly relates to Brinton's work in ethnology and archeology, including his work at the University of Pennsylvania and his participation in numerous learned societies (notably the American Philosophical Society, the American Folklore Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science). Correspondents include many of the noted archaeologists and anthropologists of his day (including Horatio Hale, Hilborne Cresson and Franz Boas), students and amateur archaeologists and linguists. There are also several items addressed to Brinton's wife after his death, including letters relating to a lawsuit against his publisher, the American Book Company (1899-1901), as well as some eulogies of Brinton.

In Biographical Materials, researchers will find a copy of Brinton's curriculum vitae, bibliographies and various obituaries.

The writings are divided into A. Book, B. Articles, C. Lectures, and D. Lecture notes and consist of a printed copy of Brinton's book Races and peoples (1890), as well as various articles and numerous lectures (including some in outline form) on archaeological, ethnological and linguistic topics. Within each subseries, articles, lectures, and lecture notes are arranged in alphabetical order.

Notes and notebooks consists of a group of numbered notebooks and notes--there may have been multiple runs of numbered notebooks, as there are occasionally more than one with the same number. This collection is lacking notebooks XI, XIV, and XV.

Writings by others includes writing by Hilbourne Thomas Cresson, William M. Gabb, Francis B. Lee, Edward Palmer, and Alfred Wright. These writings are arranged in alphabetical order by author.

This collection also includes a small group of anthropological and archaeological images including a few drawings of sites, copies of Aztec drawings and 40 photographs of Native American peoples and relics.

Finally, there are 69 maps, some printed and some manuscript, mostly of North and Central America. Many of these are marked with linguistic or ethnological groupings, and many are labeled in Spanish. Some of the manuscript maps are the work of C. Hermann Berendt.