Month: May 2016
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A “Natural Garden”: The Plant-Collecting Expedition of Amelia Smith Calvert
Written by Rive Cadwallader, archival processor Amelia Smith Calvert’s yearlong trip to Costa Rica in 1909 was not a relaxing vacation. Calvert didn’t spend her time on the beach or tucked away at some resort; instead, she hiked across the province of Cartago, to rainforest waterfalls and active volcanoes, through pastures and parks, along riverbeds…
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Alexander Hamilton’s working papers
On Monday, Penn hosts Lin-Manuel Miranda who will be giving this year’s commencement address. His acclaimed musical retelling of Alexander Hamilton’s life has sparked enormous interest in the first Secretary of the Treasury. A few months ago, in reading through scholarship on our collections, I came across a 1941 article describing a set of bound…