Consists of four botanical notebooks compiled by Higginson between 1841 and 1845 describing and listing plants collected during his botanical field trips. Also, includes two letters, one from Loren Low Dame in 1894, and one from Higginson to a professor in 1908

Thomas Wentworth Higginson field notebooks, Archives of the Gray Herbarium, Harvard University

Thomas Wentworth Higginson was born on December 22, 1823, in Cambridge, Massachusetts and was the youngest child of merchant Stephen Higginson and his wife Louisa Storrow Higginson. He entered Harvard College in 1837 at the age of 13 years and was the youngest member of his class. There he came under the influence of Thaddeus William Harris, who inspired his lifelong interest in natural history. Higginson completed his bachelor’s degree in 1841 and taught for a few years before entering Harvard Divinity School. He was ordained in September 1847 and later that month married Mary Elizabeth Channing. The couple had no children but raised a niece. Mary Higginson died in 1877; two years later Higginson married Mary Potter Thacher. The couple had two daughters: Louisa, who died in infancy in 1880, and Margaret Waldo, born in 1881. Higginson became active in the abolitionist movement while a theology student. Following his ordination he was involved in politics, religious and anti-slavery activities, and in the women’s suffrage movement. During the American Civil War, he was commanding officer of the First South Carolina Volunteers, the first regiment of freed slaves in the Union Army. Following the war, he turned his attention to writing. Throughout his life Higginson maintained an interest in entomology and botany. He was a member of the Boston Society of Natural History and the Cambridge Entomological Club, helped found the Worcester Natural History Society, and published a book of essays on plant lore (“The procession of the flowers and kindred paper”) in 1897. He died in Cambridge on May 9, 1911

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