His final journal in a series of five, David Crockett Graham documents 12 months of collecting specimens and other activities in China such as his visit to Mt. Omei (currently Emei Shan) vicinity and the Szechuan-Yunnan border region ending in October 1935. A naturalist, educator and missionary, Graham provides a narrative description of the daily activities of himself and his fellow collectors. Perhaps he was aware that his time in China was drawing to a close he writes a good deal about shipping specimens to the United States National Museum.
Join us and other digital volunteers in transcribing this typescript of his diary. The handwritten version can be seen here.
His final journal in a series of five, David Crockett Graham documents 12 months of collecting specimens and other activities in China such as his visit to Mt. Omei (currently Emei Shan) vicinity and the Szechuan-Yunnan border region ending in October 1935. A naturalist, educator and missionary, Graham provides a narrative description of the daily activities of himself and his fellow collectors. Perhaps he was aware that his time in China was drawing to a close he writes a good deal about shipping specimens to the United States National Museum.
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.
