Additional papers of Edith Banfield Jackson, 1870-1985

The additional papers of Edith Banfield Jackson include correspondence, reports, pamphlets and printed material, scrapbooks and photographs, articles and translations, and patient records and notes. The collection documents Jackson's financial, educational, and analytic involvement with Sigmund Freud and Anna Freud during the 1930s; her work creating rooming-in units at Grace-New Haven Hospital and Colorado General Hospital in the 1940s through 1960s; and her warm relationships with young doctors she mentored and other colleagues. The lives and mental health of Jackson's siblings and extended family members are also represented.

A preliminary inventory of accession #86-M28 was created in September 1986 and eventually published online. This finding aid describes material from that accession, as well as several received since that time. A copy of the preliminary inventory with cross references to the newly numbered folders listed below is in Box 1. Folder headings created by Jackson or her family members (probably while preparing material for transfer to the Library) are kept within quotation marks. Other folder titles were created by the archivist. These addenda to MC 304 are arranged in essentially the same order as MC 304: personal and family papers, professional papers, correspondence, articles and translations, and photographs. Much of the material is quite similar; a researchers would do well to look within both collections. The Jackson family correspondence in this collection is much more robust, as is the photographic documentation of Jackson's work with young children.

SERIES I, PERSONAL, 1907-1985 (#1.1-4.9, F+D.1, Mem.1), includes Edith Banfield Jackson's appointment books and calendars, financial material, biographical articles and clippings, wills, and memorabilia and printed material related to the Sacco and Vanzetti trial. Financial papers document Jackson's income and charitable gifts over her lifetime. Jackson inherited money from her father in 1919, and also received income from royalties on her father's first wife Helen Hunt Jackson's books. Her income taxes contain lists of her investments, and she also prepared lists of her charitable donations and membership fees each year. See also Series II, specifically correspondence with brothers William S. Jackson and Gardner "Pat" Jackson, for more documentation of Edith Banfield Jackson's financial affairs. Income taxes show lists of investments. Several folders contain documentation of Jackson's love of gardening, and the kinds of plants she grew at her homes in Connecticut and Colorado. The series is arranged alphabetically.

SERIES II. JACKSON AND BANFIELD FAMILIES, 1874-1979 (#4.10-8.12), contains correspondence among Edith Banfield Jackson and her siblings, their children, and between members of her maternal Banfield relatives. Some folders contain biographical clippings and other documents, but the majority of the series is correspondence.

Banfield family members included here are Edith Banfield Jackson's mother's siblings and mother, most of whom resided in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, on the shore of Lake Winnepesaukee. Anne Scofield Fiske (1834-1915) married Everett Colby Banfield (1828-1887); their six children were Richard (b. 1856?), Anne Fiske Banfield Davenport (b. 1857), Helen Fiske Banfield Jackson (1859?-1899), Nathan F. (b. 1860), Mary "Mamie" C. Banfield Avery (b. 1866?), and Edith Colby Banfield (1870-1903). Helen Fiske Banfield Jackson and Edith Colby Banfield both attended Vassar College; letters to their mother describe their classes, as well as social and religious life at the college. Nathan Banfield moved to Minnesota and worked as a banker; he oversaw many of the family finances, and his letters to family members reveal this. A number of Banfield family letters describe the childhood of the Jackson siblings--these include letters from Edith Colby Banfield, the children's "Aunt Kitty" (#5.4, 5.5), as well as letters from her siblings who went to Colorado following her untimely death in 1903 (#4.11, 4.17)

Edith Banfield Jackson exchanged letters with her siblings throughout her life; these detail their difficult childhood, address the mental health and illness of each other, financial affairs, worries about each other's health, politics, and family news. William S. Jackson graduated from Harvard College and received a law degree from the University of Denver. He worked as a banker, a lawyer, a US Department of Justice agent, and was a Justice (1942-1950) and Chief Justice (1951-1953) of the Colorado Supreme Court. He also administered almost all of Edith Banfield Jackson's financial affairs, and letters between him and Edith are often about which investments to make or stocks to buy. Everett Jackson graduated from Colorado College, was a Rhodes Scholar, and worked with an ambulance corps in Paris in 1916 before joining the United States Army. He suffered from anxiety and depression; in a letter from Paris he told Edith, "I am a neurasthenic" (#5.12). Everett Jackson was hospitalized for several years at Bloomingdale Insane Asylum (later Bloomingdale Hospital) in White Plains, New York, and killed himself by jumping into a canyon in 1924. Letters Edith Banfield Jackson received from Everett in this series (#5.12) are written from Oxford when a Rhodes Scholar, from Paris while serving as an ambulance driver, and from the Bloomingdale hospital in 1921 and 1922. Letters to Edith from her brother Gardner describe Everett's hospitalization and treatment in great detail (#5.14).

Gardner "Pat" Jackson attended Amherst College and Columbia University, and worked as a journalist for over a decade, reporting on the Sacco and Vanzetti trial for the Boston Globe. He worked periodically for the United States government, including in the Agricultural Adjustment Administration and as Special Assistant to the Secretary of Agriculture. Gardner Jackson also worked for a number of liberal organizations, primarily focusing on agricultural and labor issues. His letters to Edith (#5.14-5.16) detail the political climate in Washington, DC, during the 1940s as well as the emotional and physical problems confronting him and other family members. Gardner Jackson also administered the family's Helen Hunt Jackson royalties. Edith Jackson's letters home to her siblings during her years in Vienna (#7.11-7.12, 8.3-8.4) describe her life as an analysand, as well as her increasing worries about the European political situation. Also documented in this series is Edith Jackson's close relationship with her many nieces and nephews. Most correspondence is listed under the name of the letter recipient. The series is arranged alphabetically by family member, with some general Jackson family material filed at the end.

SERIES III, PROFESSIONAL PAPERS, 1879, 1923-1977 (#8.13-13.8, 19FB.1v-19FB.2v), includes reports, meeting minutes, patient notes, correspondence, and printed material. Most material is related to the fields of pediatrics and child psychiatry. Several folders hold material about breast feeding and breast milk banks, natural childbirth, and parent education. Documents about best practices for and effects of group child care are included: a handmade book describes (in German) "A Day at the Nursery" in Vienna (#12.14); two scrapbooks contain photographs and reports from the Jackson Krippe on children's play, social interactions, and general psychological development (#19FB.1v-19FB.2v); reports describe the workings of Anna Freud's Hampstead Nursery (#9.13); Jackson was hired to advise on training staff for the Bank Street School's intended 24-hour nursery camp (#8.16); a folder (#10.3) contains a report on how children responded to communal kibbutz living in Israel; and the Edith B. Jackson Child Care Program at Yale is introduced and described (#9.9). Also included are reports Jackson wrote on seminars at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute (#12.13). International Social Service material details attempts to resettle Greek orphans in the United States. Patient records include index cards with Jackson's notes on individual patient's appointments and medications; detailed psychiatric notes; and correspondence with and about patients. Several young male patients were referred to Jackson due to homosexual issues that interfered with World War II enlistment. Most other patients documented here are young children with behavioral or emotional issues and/or their mothers. When possible, patient records have ben redacted to remove personal information. Folders where redaction was not an option are closed until the presumed death of the patient. The series is arranged alphabetically.

SERIES IV, CORRESPONDENCE, 1916-1977 (#13.9-17.9), includes letters from Edith Banfield Jackson's friends and colleagues, as well as some of Jackson's responses. Of note are letters from Anna Freud, Martin Freud, and from Kurt R. Eissler re: the establishment of the Sigmund Freud Archives. Jackson corresponded with her medical school classmates Irmarita Kellers Putnam, Marian "Molly" Putnam, and Louise Darrow throughout their lives. Irmarita Putnam also studied with Freud in Vienna, and Jackson's letters to her (#15.4) include reports of Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute seminars Jackson attended after Putnam returned to the United States. Much correspondence is with young colleagues Jackson mentored at Yale: Henry Kempe, John "Jock" Cobb, James Kleeman, Ethelyn Klatskin. The children of many of these doctors were also close to Jackson; many of their letters are included. Other correspondence is with European refugees whom Jackson helped settle in America in the 1930s (Hans Kolba, Hansi Beck-Ungar) and with Viennese families she had known in Vienna (the Holzreithers and Hrdlickas). The series is arranged alphabetically by correspondent, followed by correspondence organized chronologically.

SERIES V, ARTICLES AND TRANSLATIONS, 1930-1980 (#17.10-18.8), includes published articles and translations, some by Edith Banfield Jackson. Translations are of psychoanalytic articles or talks, and are mainly translated from German into English. Most of Edith Banfield Jackson's published writings are in MC 304. This series also includes several articles about Edith Banfield Jackson and her work at Yale, written by her colleague Morris Wessel, as well as his research correspondence with others who knew Jackson. The series is arranged alphabetically.

SERIES VI, PHOTOGRAPHS, 1870-ca.1970 (PD.1-PD.21), includes formal portraits and informal snapshots of Edith Banfield Jackson, her family and friends. Of note are photographs of Sigmund Freud and his chow dog Jofi, souvenir photographs of an early automobile trip in Colorado; and photographs of pageants put on by the Jackson siblings. An undated tintype may be of Jackson's maternal Banfield relatives. The series is arranged alphabetically.

Most of the photographs in this collection are or will be digitized and available online.

In addition to the Edith Jackson Papers held at the Schlesinger Library, related material can be found in the Willam Sharpless Jackson family papers at the Denver Public Library, and the Gardner Jackson papers at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum.