Digital Collections at Bryn Mawr College

The collection consists of representative images from more than 150 botanical and ornithological books, printed between 1499 and 1920, and including many of the landmark works in each field. The books are from the Ethelinda Schaefer Castle Collection.

Carrie Lane Chapman Catt (1859-1947) was an internationally recognized suffragist, feminist, and political activist. This collection contains six of Catt’s personal photograph albums, circa 1840 to 1940. The albums contain approximately 815 photographs related to the women's suffrage movement, including portraits and records of parades, demonstrations, conferences, and other events. The albums cover both the American and international suffrage movements. Notable figures depicted include: Louisa May Alcott, Dr. Josephine Baker, Carrie Chapman Catt, Emmeline Pankhurst, Mark Twain, Theodore Roosevelt, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Woodrow Wilson.

The Early Advertising Collection contains European and American printed advertisements dating from 1790 to 1910. The majority of the collection are trade cards of the late nineteenth century.

Scrapbook of letters written by Frances Arnold, Bryn Mawr College Class of 1897, to her parents and cousin, written from Bryn Mawr and during Arnold's travel to France, Germany and Italy, ca. 1893-1897. Note that to date, the scrapbook is loaded with no additional transcription or description at the page level. It is uploaded for browsing only and it not full-text searchable.

Mary Whitall Worthington (d. 1912) was a graduate of Bryn Mawr College class of 1910 and the president of the Bryn Mawr chapter of the Woman’s Equal Suffrage League. She was the niece of the College’s second president, M. Carey Thomas. After graduating from Bryn Mawr, Worthington attended Johns Hopkins Medical School but died as the result of congenital heart failure in January 1912. This collection primarily includes Worthington’s diaries, covering her time at Bryn Mawr College and her first year of medical school at Johns Hopkins University and interspersed with photographs, correspondence, and ephemera. They are extensive and eloquent reflections on Worthington’s life as a young woman attending college in the early 20th century. The collection also includes Worthington’s notes, a speech written for a Suffrage League meeting, and a handwritten play.

The Single Leaf Manuscripts Collection features several dozen medieval manuscripts donated by Sigmund Harrison. Most of these are religious texts and written in Latin. Additional highlights of this collection, gifts of Felix Usis, include six papal bulls, a document sealed by Queen Elizabeth I, a legal document signed by Louis XV, a letter signed by Philip II of Spain to the man in charge of supplies for his armada, and a few Arabic manuscripts, including one with an extraordinary illustration of a medieval battle scene.

The Speer Family Papers represent four generations of that family, with the bulk of material attributed to Robert Elliott Speer and his wife and three of his five children: Emma Bailey, Elliott, Margaret Bailey, and William Speer. To date, a selection of letters, scrapbooks, images and ephemera from the Speer collection have been digitized to provide an introduction to Margaret Bailey Speer, a strong leader and visionary who applied herself fully to the matters that compelled her. This engagement is most visible in her work for the education of Chinese women, with which she involved herself in various capacities beginning in the years shortly after her graduation from Bryn Mawr College in 1922, and continuing up until her death.