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COLLECTION Identifier: MS Thr 470 (1185) - (1501)

Rogers Memorial Collection: Photographs, prints, and drawings

Overview

Photographs, prints, drawings, and other images collected by Henry Munroe Rogers and Clara Kathleen Rogers.

Dates

  • Creation: 1600-1936
  • Creation: Majority of material found within 1861-1936

Conditions Governing Access

There are no restrictions on physical access to this material.

The majority of this series is not housed at the Houghton Library but is shelved offsite at the Harvard Depository. Retrieval requires advance notice. Readers should check with Houghton Public Services staff to determine what material is offsite and retrieval policies and times.

Framed and portfolio material are housed on-site at Houghton Library.

Extent

8 linear feet (11 boxes and 1 volume)

This collection consists of portraits and views collected by Henry Munroe Rogers and Clara Kathleen Rogers. It primarily contains photographs, but also includes significant numbers of prints, and some original drawings and watercolors. The photographs include cabinet photographs, cartes-de-visite, daguerreotypes, and tintypes.

The portraits comprising Subseries A are mostly of theatrical figures, friends, and members of the extended Rogers family. Subseries B consists of portraits of theatrical figures collected by Flora MacDonald Alderman, who gave them to Henry Munroe Rogers for his collection in 1933. Subseries C includes views of places visited by the Rogers family. Subseries D consists of groups of photographs which were found either assembled in albums or grouped in packets.

Biographical / Historical

Henry Munroe Rogers (1839-1937) was a Boston lawyer and a patron of local theater. Born in Boston, he was one of six children of John Hicks Rogers and Lucy Catherine Smith. He attended Harvard College (A.B. 1862; L.L.B. 1867) and served as a paymaster in the United States Navy during the Civil War. He became a successful Boston lawyer and a charter member in the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States. After his marriage in 1878 to the English opera singer Clara Kathleen Barnett (daughter of the English composer John Barnett), the couple entertained many theatrical, literary and musical luminaries in their home.

Arrangement

Arranged into the following subseries:

  1. A. Portraits
  2. B. Portraits from the collection of Mrs. F.M. Alderman
  3. C. Views
  4. D. Groups of photographs

Physical Location

b [volume shelved flat], pf, Harvard Depository

Immediate Source of Acquisition

No accession number. Gift of Clara Kathleen Rogers and Henry Munroe Rogers; received: 1930.

The core of the collection arrived in 1930, but Henry Munroe Rogers continued to add material informally through 1937. Katharine M. Gericke donated a portrait of her father Wilhelm Gericke in 1963.

Separated Materials

The Rogers Memorial Collection, of which this is Series VII, contains literary, musical and historical material from Boston circa 1870-1930, and memorabilia of the English composer John Barnett (1802-1890). A master list of the Rogers Memorial Collection series can be found in HOLLIS 10104119.

Bibliography

For a description of the Rogers Memorial Collection, see The Rogers Memorial Room : an account of the nature, origin, and significance of the memorabilia presented to Harvard College in 1930 by Clara Kathleen & Henry Munroe Rogers ([Boston] : Cosmos Press, 1935).

General note

The majority of this series is shelved offsite at the Harvard Depository. See access restrictions below for additional information.

Processing Information

Processed by: Rick Stattler

Processing Information

In 2020-2022, as part of a conscious and inclusive re-description effort, entries were updated to include a woman’s first name when identified.

Title
Rogers, Henry Munroe, 1839-1937, collector. Rogers Memorial Collection: Photographs, prints, and drawings, circa 1600-1936: Guide.
Author
Houghton Library, Harvard College Library
Language of description
und
EAD ID
hou01908

Repository Details

Part of the Houghton Library Repository

Houghton Library is Harvard College's principal repository for rare books and manuscripts, archives, and more. Houghton Library's collections represent the scope of human experience from ancient Egypt to twenty-first century Cambridge. With strengths primarily in North American and European history, literature, and culture, collections range in media from printed books and handwritten manuscripts to maps, drawings and paintings, prints, posters, photographs, film and audio recordings, and digital media, as well as costumes, theater props, and a wide range of other objects. Houghton Library has historically focused on collecting the written record of European and Eurocentric North American culture, yet it holds a large and diverse number of primary sources valuable for research on the languages, culture and history of indigenous peoples of the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania.

Houghton Library’s Reading Room is free and open to all who wish to use the library’s collections.

Contact:
Harvard Yard
Harvard University
Cambridge MA 02138 USA
(617) 495-2440