David Crockett Graham kept careful and diligent notes of his field work in China. Diary C, as he labeled it, picks back up where Diary B left off, from 5 December 1933 to 6 July 1934. Naturalist, educator and missionary in China's Szechuan region, Graham collected specimens for the United States National Museum. Many of these notes are focused on packing specimens for shipment to the Smithsonian, but include his notes about the death of one of his aborigine collectors, the activities of other aborigine collectors, and a brief trip to Kiating (currently Leshan).
Join us and other digital volunteers in transcribing this typescript of his diary. The handwritten version can be seen here.
In the second half of 1933, David Crockett Graham, naturalist, educator and missionary in China continued collecting specimens for the United States National Museum. This field book is the second of five diaries covering the period of 1932 through 1935 and documents an expedition to Wen Chuan Hsien, Dong Men Wai, Sa Ping Kuang, and other locations. Graham's narrative style captures his daily activities including amounts and types of mammals, birds, reptiles and insects collected, often providing additional details such as the common name, elevation, date, and location where a specimen was collected or purchased.
Join us and other digital volunteers in transcribing this typescript of his diary. 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.