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William Whitman Bailey was born in West Point, NewYork on February 22, 1843, the youngest child of Professor Jacob Whitman Bailey and Maria Slaughter. In 1852, at the age of 9 young Bailey embarked with his father, mother and only sister, on board the Henry Clay from, West Point New York. Fire broke out on the steamer and amidst the chaos, his mother and sister were drowned. He suffered greatly from the shock which weakened his constitution consequently affecting his health for the rest of his life.
He left West Point in 1857, a few days before his father's death, and went to Providence where he entered the University Grammar School. In 1860 he entered Brown University. During his college career, in 1862, during the Civil War, he enlisted as a provate in the Tenth Regimen in Rhode Island Volunteers for 3 months. His health broke down and he returned to Providence. He graduated in 1864 and served in the Chemical Laboratory until 1866 when he became Assistant Chemist at Manchester Print Works, N.H. and later became Assistant in the Chemical laboratory of Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In 1867 he heard of the United States Geological Exploration of the 40th Parallel. He sought and acquired the position of Botanist although in 1868 his health broke down and Sereno Watson took his place. He was engaged in various occupations for several years, including teaching summer school at Harvard but his botanical career was said to have begun in 1877 when he started a private class of Botany at Brown. This was the beginning of a long course of botanical instruction covering nearly 30 years. He became Professor of Botany in 1881 and devoted himself to teaching systematic botany and vegetable morphology until his failing health compelled his resignation in 1906.
He died on February 20, 1914. His wife, Eliza Randall Simmons of Providence, R.I. and two children, Whitman and Margaret Emerson survived him.
Collection of correspondence covering the period 1876- 1904, when Bailey was teaching botany at Brown University. A bound notebook, titled A Diary of a Journey in California and Nevada covering the period 1867-1868 when W. W. Bailey was Botanist of the United States Geological Exploration of the 40th Parallel has been removed from the collection and is cataloged as MSS 001.
Arrangement |
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| The collection is organized into two series: | ||
| Series 1: Correspondence. 1876-1904. Arranged alphabetically by correspondent. | ||
| Series 2: Diary. 1867-1868. Bound notebook. | ||
This collection is open for research with permission from Mertz Library staff.
Requests for permission to publish material from the collection should be submitted in writing to the LuEsther T. Mertz Library of the New York Botanical Garden.
Indexing Terms |
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| The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog. | ||
| Persons | ||
| Bailey, William Whitman, 1843-1914 -- Archives. | ||
| Subjects | ||
| Botany -- Study and teaching (Higher) -- Rhode Island. | ||
| United States Geological Survey of the Fortieth Parallel (1867-1881) -- Manuscripts. | ||
| Organizations | ||
| New York Botanical Garden. | ||
| Document Types | ||
| correspondence. | ||
| diaries. | ||
Brown University Archives
William Whitman Bailey Papers, 1856-1914.
Harvard University, Gray Herbarium and Arnold Arboretum Libraries
Papers of William Whitman Bailey, 1884-1914.
A Diary of a Journey in California and Nevada has been removed from the collection and is cataloged as MSS 001
William Whitman Bailey (PP), Archives, The New York Botanical Garden.
This collection was a donation, accessioned on 10 August 1989. The original accession number was 89-21.
Processed by Susan Fraser, NYBG Archivist, July 2000, with grant funding from The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH-PA-23141-98). Converted to EAD in December 2005 by Kathleene Konkle under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) PA-50678-04.