Missionary, educator and naturalist David Crockett Graham spent twenty years in the Szechuan (Sichuan) province of China, arriving in 1911. This field book is the tenth in his personal record of personal expeditions to collect specimens of mammals, birds, insects, snails and more for the United States National Museum. Covering July through December 1930, Graham describes the daily activities of his expedition to Tatsienlu (currently Lucheng) and the Szechuan-Tibet border region. He also describes packing specimens to be mailed, artifacts and ethnological and anthropological observations during this trip.
Help us transcribe the typescript version this diary. Together this work helps us make his diary contents fully accessible to researchers and scholars online. The handwritten version can be seen here.
Missionary, educator and naturalist David Crockett Graham spent twenty years in the Szechuan (Sichuan) province of China, arriving in 1911. This field book is the tenth in his personal record of personal expeditions to collect specimens of mammals, birds, insects, snails and more for the United States National Museum. Covering July through December 1930, Graham describes the daily activities of his expedition to Tatsienlu (currently Lucheng) and the Szechuan-Tibet border region. He also describes packing specimens to be mailed, artifacts and ethnological and anthropological observations during this trip.
Help us transcribe the typescript version this diary. Together this work helps us make his diary contents fully accessible to researchers and scholars online. The handwritten version can be seen here.
David Crockett Graham received a B. A. from Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington, in 1908. Graham then attended Rochester Theological Seminary in New York, where, in 1911, he completed his studies and was ordained into the Baptist ministry. Shortly afterward, Graham entered the service of the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society, departing for China in the fall of 1911. They first stopped briefly in Shanghai in order to acquaint themselves with the Chinese language and culture. They were further delayed there by the outbreak of the 1911 revolution which toppled the Manchu dynasty. Finally, they arrived in the province of Szechuan (Sichuan), where they were stationed for the next twenty years. In the fall of 1926, Graham pursued a year of doctoral study covering anthropology, ethnology, and psychology of primitive peoples and religions. During the period from 1919 to 1939, Graham made fourteen summer expeditions in Szechuan, the Szechuan-Tibetan region, and the Szechuan-Yunnan region, and several short field collecting trips in the vicinities of Suifu, and Chengtu. The specimens he sent to the USNM were mostly mammals, birds, insects, snakes, and anthropological relics. In addition, he sent anthropological measurements of Chinese people, and Chinese aborigines common in Szechuan such as the Ch'uan Miao, Ch'iang, Lolo, and the Bolstoi people, as well as their costumes and handicrafts. Graham kept diaries detailing his activities, mostly during the 1924 to 1935 period.