The papers are open for research according to the regulations of the Smith College Archives without any additional restrictions.

Single photocopies may be made for research purposes. Permission to publish material from the documents must be requested from the Smith College Archives. Smith College owns copyright to any published material relating to college events and activities. Provenance and copyright ownership of other materials is unknown and researchers are responsible for determining any question of copyright.

Please use the following format when citing materials from this collection:

Frances H. Johnson Papers, Box #, Smith College Archives.

The Frances H. Johnson Papers were donated around 1945 to Smith College by Miss Frances H. Johnson of Hartford, Connecticut. There appears to be no formal record of accession apart from an announcement in the Friends of the Smith College Library annual report of March 1946.

Johnson decided to donate her papers to Smith at the suggestion of her neighbor, Mary A. Goodman of the Smith College Class of 1896. Goodman is referred to in correspondence between Johnson and Margaret Grierson, Smith College's librarian at the time.

The collection was partially organized by an unknown person who is likely responsible for the dates written in blue pen on many of the otherwise undated letters. It is presumed that these dates were taken from the postmarks of their original envelopes and that the dates correspond more or less to the date on which the letter was actually written. An exception is the June 17 letter from Kay (last name not given), which has been dated 1948 but, because Johnson died in 1947, is more likely to have been 1943 or 1944. To the rest of the undated letters, where possible, dates have been added in pencil, in brackets, and most of the leftover envelopes have been discarded. Many letters remain undated.