Naturalist David Crockett Graham lived and worked in China for almost two decades in the 1920's and 1930's collecting mammals, birds, insects and reptiles for the United States National Museum. Diary D is his fourth in a series of five that cover 1932 to 1935. Beginning 3 July 1934, this journal spans the next four months and documents Graham's visit to the Szechuan-Yunnan border region. In his typical narrative style, Graham captures his daily activities and the collectors with him including descriptions of the amounts and types of mammals, birds, reptiles and insects collected as well as additional details.
Join us and other digital volunteers in transcribing this typescript of his diary. The handwritten version can be seen here.
Naturalist David Crockett Graham lived and worked in China for almost two decades in the 1920's and 1930's collecting mammals, birds, insects and reptiles for the United States National Museum. Diary C is his fourth in a series of five that cover 1932 to 1935. Beginning 3 July 1934, this journal spans the next four months and documents Graham's visit to the Szechuan-Yunnan border region. In his typical narrative style, Graham captures his daily activities and the collectors with him including descriptions of the amounts and types of mammals, birds, reptiles and insects collected as well as additional details.
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.