Ellen Trueblood Papers, 1925-1994

Several short biographical sketches of Ellen Trueblood (including an obituary) are contained in this series, along with feature newspaper articles from the 1950s and 70s profiling her mycological activities (Folder 1). Also included are some stories about her 1941 North Carolina deer hunt with the Outdoors Writers Association of America (Folder 7) and a short biographical sketch she wrote of Ted Trueblood (Folder 11).

Most of the correspondence in Ellen Trueblood's general correspondence files dates after the death of her husband. Much of it relates to Ted Trueblood's work and writings; some correspondence relates to Ellen's own environmental lobbying. There is little family correspondence; just a few items in Folder 21. Ellen kept up correspondence with Peter Barrett, her husband's friend, even after Ted's death; letters from him are in Folder 22. The letters back and forth between Ellen and Earl Swanson of Idaho State College, Pocatello, concern Indian rock art and a rock shelter in Owyhee County, Idaho.

There are two correspondence files from the 1940s, a general file (Folder 14) and a file of correspondence with Bernard Mainwaring, publisher of the Idaho Free Press in Nampa (Folder 24). A number of letters in the general file pertain to articles Ellen wrote for the New York Times and This Week magazine. Her New York Times article is found in Series 4, Writings (Box 3, Folder 5) and the magazine article in Box 3, Folder 1.

Both files from the 1940s contain letters illustrating the opportunities that opened up for women in the newspaper field when men went to war. In February 1942, before Ted and Ellen decided to return to Idaho, she applied to be editor of a local newspaper in Windsor, North Carolina. The publisher wrote her back: "Heretofore we have always had a man in this place. Conditions brought about by war and other matters beyond our control have cause[d] this post to be open. We are willing to give a capable, hardworking, hard-headed woman a shot at it--for the duration, at least." He invited her to an interview. In the meantime, however, she decided that Windsor was too far from Raleigh, where they lived. "I am sorry I will have to pass up the opportunity of proving to you that a woman can do the job," Ellen wrote in reply. "I hope you find a good, capable, person for the work." (Box 1, Folder 14)

Ellen Trueblood began studying mushrooms in earnest in the 1950s. Her files of mycological-related correspondence reflects her work as a surveyor, collector, cultivator, and photographer of mushrooms and fungi. She corresponded with both professional mycologists and amateurs, and she supplied specimens, slides, and photographs to researchers and publishers.

An exchange of letters in 1976 between Ellen Trueblood and James M. Trappe, principal mycologist for the U.S. Forestry Sciences Laboratory at Corvallis, Oregon, is illustrative of her work. Ellen sent him some specimens of Sarcopshaera she had found growing near artemisia and other shrubs in the desert in eastern Oregon. That species was commonly associated with conifers, so she asked if he had heard other reports of association with the shrubs. "Your collections of Sarcosphaera from desert habitats astound me," Trappe wrote back, "because I, too, had regarded it as a conifer associate. In fact, it seemed so tied to conifers, especially pines, that I presumed it to be an obligate mycorrhizal fungus." He wondered if pines might not be growing nearby, for ponderosa pine roots can extend several hundred feet away from the trunk. Ellen wrote back assuring him the nearest pines were thirty miles away. Trappe speculated that the Sarcosphaera was either not a mycorrhizal fungus after all, or a mycorrhizal that could be associated with shrubs as well as conifers (Box 2, Folder 14).

The files of correspondence with Smith Kline & French Laboratories relate to Ellen Trueblood's cultivation of fungi for them in search of chemotherapeutic agents (Box 12, Folders 12 and 13). The files contain correspondence with others relating to that work as well as correspondence with the company itself. "We have had some exciting times and anxious moments during the last month while learning to manipulate and grow the first group of basidiomycete cultures which you sent us," wrote one of the laboratory microbiologists in May of 1973 (Box 2, Folder 13). "Currently, all are growing reasonably well and, within the next week, we hope to begin our first experiments on permanently preserving them by controlled rate freezing in liquid nitrogen."

Other correspondence relating to mushrooms and mycology is located in Series 5 (Grant project files), Series 6 (Organizations), and Series 8 (Mycology notes). There is no file of correspondence in this series with Alexander H. Smith, who encouraged Ellen Trueblood's early studies, although there is a file of letters exchanged with his wife Helen and their daughter Nancy Weber, also mycologists (Box 2, Folder 11).

This series contains both typescripts and printed versions of articles and feature stories written by Ellen Trueblood. The series includes samples of her early newspaper work (Box 3, Folder 1), her New York Times article (Folder 5), articles from North Carolina (Folders 1, 6, and 7), and scientific articles on fungi that appeared in Mycologia, McIlvainea, Studies on Higher Fungi, and elsewhere. As a reporter for the Nampa, Idaho, Free Press, she covered the arrest and incarceration of Idaho author Vardis Fisher for speeding in Nampa in 1939. That celebrated incident (which Fisher recounted in his own newspaper column in his uniquely acerbic style) is documented in Folder 5.

Clippings of more of Ellen Trueblood's newspaper articles from the 1930s are found in a scrapbook in Series 9 (Box 10). Lengthy diary-like accounts she wrote of camping and hunting trips with her husband Ted are located in the Ted Trueblood papers, Series 6 (Field notebooks and diaries).

In 1969, Ellen Trueblood obtained a grant from the Max C. Fleischmann Foundation of Reno, Nevada, to survey the higher fungi of the Owyhee Mountains. She assembled 1012 collections, representing ninety genera, at least three species new to science, and nine species previously unknown to North America (Box 3, Folder 29, "The Higher Fungi of the Owyhee Mountains..."). She deposited her collections with Dr. Alexander H. Smith at the University of Michigan Herbarium, where they formed the core of the university's collection of fungi from arid regions.

The grant was renewed in 1971, with additional support provided by Alexander H. Smith out of a National Science Foundation grant he received to study Western fungi. In 1972, Dr. Smith's daughter, Dr. Nancy Weber, joined Mrs. Trueblood in Idaho for a month of collecting in the Owyhees. They camped out in the mountains, making 812 collections and drying their fungi in the field with catalytic heaters (Box 3, Folder 31).

This short series contains reports, correspondence, and grant applications by Mrs. Trueblood. Two letters from Alexander H. Smith, relating chiefly to funding, are found in Folder 30.

These files contain correspondence, reports, newsletters, clippings, and other papers, from organizations with which Ellen Trueblood was associated, as well as letters by Mrs. Trueblood documenting her work with them.

Ellen Trueblood was one of the founders of the Southern Idaho Mycological Association. The files relating to that organization document its founding in 1976 and its first twelve years of activity. Its first major undertaking came in September of 1976, when it hosted the annual foray of the North American Mycological Association in Valley County, Idaho.

Ellen Trueblood's subject files contain notes and mimeographed information sheets on a variety of nature-related topics, including several southwestern Idaho bird censuses from 1976 (Box 5, Folder 1). The last six folders in this series relate to wilderness issues in Idaho in the 1980s. Included are clippings documenting the public debate over U.S. Senator James McClure's 1984 wilderness bill for Idaho, as well as Ellen Trueblood's correspondence in opposition to it. She opposed the bill because she believed it did not designate enough lands for wilderness status. In a letter to the editor published in the Idaho Statesman on June 11, 1984, she called it an "anti-wilderness bill."

This series consists largely of notes, articles, and trial field keys for and about various species and genera of fungi, mostly in the Pacific Northwest . Occasionally Ellen Trueblood placed correspondence in these files as well. At the end of the series (in Box 8) are notes, handouts, and source materials Ellen Trubelood used in teaching her class on "Idaho Mushrooms" at Boise State University in 1975; lists of slides and photos she sent to Alexander H. Smith at the University of Michigan; and other notes about mushrooms and fungi. Most of the materials in this series date from the 1970s and 1980s.

The ten notebooks in this series (Box 9) contain notes from trips and mushroom-hunting expeditions, as well as other notes. There are diary-like entries in Notebook 1 chronicling a camping and fishing trip Ellen and Ted Trueblood took in June 1959. Among the notations was one recording the discovery of a "little scorpion in [the] paper bag lunch had been in and another about 7" long under bag of potatoes" (June 5). The next day she recorded "We had blue grouse cooked in [the] Dutch oven, mashed potatoes & gravy, tossed salad & stewed tomatoes for dinner!" Their sons did not accompany them on this trip, so "Ted and I went swimming in our bay tonight" (June 11). Other writings by Ellen about their camping trips (including an account of their unusual honeymoon) are found in the Ted Trueblood papers, Series 6 (Field Notebooks and Diaries).

The scrapbook in Box 10 contains clippings of articles Ellen wrote for the Caldwell News Tribune, the Nampa Free Press, and Boise Capital News in the 1930s.

The photos in this series are primarily color snapshots taken between 1975 and 1990. Included is a small album of snapshots taken at Ted Trueblood Night in Nampa, Idaho, in 1978, along with four 5"x7" photos taken at the same event (Envelope 16). Also included in this series is a photo of the mushroom Hygrophorous ellenae, a species named after Ellen Trueblood (Envelope 6).