Pages from Clara M. Reed's Dresden travel journal, September 1890

The Miscellaneous Manuscripts Collection consists of biographical sketches, correspondence, diaries, genealogies, photographs, photograph albums, memoirs, memorabilia, postcards, scrapbooks, and travel journals dating from 1814 to 1987. This material documents various aspects of the daily lives and activities of women from diverse backgrounds. This collection is made up of individual items or groups of items that are too small to stand on their own as separate collections, but are otherwise unrelated.

About half of the collection dates from the nineteenth century and consists primarily of correspondence, diaries, and unpublished memoirs from unknown, or little known, women. Also included are a few letters from well-known figures such as Susan B. Anthony, Alice Stone Blackwell, Alice Morse Earle, Edward Everett Hale, Julia Ward Howe, and Frances Willard; a photo of Harriet Beecher Stowe; and autographed quotations by William Lloyd Garrison, Isabella Beecher Hooker, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

The twentieth century material is more varied. In addition to correspondence, diaries and memoirs, it includes many photographs (both loose and in albums), some genealogical material, and other miscellaneous memorabilia. Well-known figures represented in the correspondence include Booker T. Washington and Madame Chiang Kai-shek. The letters of Ellen Downes, a Naval secretary, written from Japan, Washington D.C., and Moscow between 1937 and 1948, are accompanied by photos and are very descriptive. A family photo album belonging to a woman identified only as "Gertrude" contains many interesting photographs, including some of Native Americans and some of cross-dressed women, taken in California, Albuquerque, and Canada, circa 1905 to 1913.