Parents worry about their children. They just do. And despite the fact that coleopterist Doris Holmes Blake and her husband, botanist Sidney Blake, were busy working at Smithsonian’s U.S. National Museum, they still found time to worry about their daughter, Doris Sidney, who was away at Radcliffe College. In nearly daily letters to her daughter, Doris Holmes Blake expressed various parental anxieties, including questions about if Doris Sidney was riding her bike in the dark, if she was washing her sheets enough, if she had a cough, if she was financially stable, how her school grades were, and the status of her dating life. Especially about her dating life. Grab some popcorn and settle in with your fellow volunpeers to help transcribe glimpses into this mother-daughter relationship and college life in the 1940s. Funding for the digitization of Blake's correspondence, & its inclusion into the Transcription Center, was provided by the Smithsonian Women's Committee.
Parents worry about their children. They just do. And despite the fact that coleopterist Doris Holmes Blake and her husband, botanist Sidney Blake, were busy working at Smithsonian’s U.S. National Museum, they still found time to worry about their daughter, Doris Sidney, who was away at Radcliffe College. In nearly daily letters to her daughter, Doris Holmes Blake expressed various parental anxieties, including questions about if Doris Sidney was riding her bike in the dark, if she was washing her sheets enough, if she had a cough, if she was financially stable, how her school grades were, and the status of her dating life. Especially about her dating life. Grab some popcorn and settle in with your fellow volunpeers to help transcribe glimpses into this mother-daughter relationship and college life in the 1940s. Funding for the digitization of Blake's correspondence, & its inclusion into the Transcription Center, was provided by the Smithsonian Women's Committee.
For more information about Doris Holmes Blake's collection of personal papers, dig into the finding aid.