Doris Holmes Blake - Correspondence with Doris Sidney Blake, February - April 1948

Although Doris Sidney Blake’s letters to her mother, Smithsonian entomologist Doris Holmes Blake, and her father, Smithsonian botanist Sidney Blake, seemed pretty typical, the younger Doris was struggling with her mental health while attending Radcliffe College in 1948. In between nearly daily letters about Doris Sidney’s classes and her love life is a letter from a college physician diagnosing the young student with depression. In one very honest exchange, Doris Holmes Blake worries that her close involvement in her daughter’s upbringing may have caused her some unhappiness in adulthood. Join a group of volunpeers in transcribing this project, which not only sheds light on college life and the Smithsonian during this period, but also reveals how people discussed (or mostly didn’t discuss) mental health in the ‘40s. For more information, explore the finding aid. Funding for the digitization of Blake's correspondence, and its inclusion into the Transcription Center, was provided by the Smithsonian Women's Committee.