Doris Sidney Blake - Diary, April 1936

What was it like for an eight-year-old girl to travel on a collecting trip with her scientist parents? In April 1936, Doris Sidney Blake, daughter of Smithsonian entomologist Doris Holmes Blake and USDA botanist Sidney Fay Blake, certainly wasn’t bored during the family’s road trip to Florida. She detailed every animal and insect that they came across (and sometimes kept), such as lizards, turtles, beetles, and grasshoppers. It seems that the family had a special interest in collecting fossil sea shells. Join a group of volunpeers in transcribing this project, which explores a scientific collecting trip from the perspective of a young child. Here’s a tip: the last three pages of this project are typed transcriptions of the diary. Warning: this project contains a racial slur. For more information about the Doris Holmes Blake Papers, check out the finding aid.