William Evans Lawrence was a faculty member in botany and plant ecology at Oregon State College from 1910 until his death in 1947. Lawrence was born April 15, 1883 in Randolph County, Indiana. He earned a B.S. from Earlham College (Indiana) in 1904 and did graduate work at the University of Chicago. Prior to coming to Oregon Agricultural College in 1910 as a botany instructor, he taught at Michigan State College in 1906 and Oklahoma A & M from 1907-1909. Lawrence was an Associate Professor of plant ecology at the time of his death in 1947. He was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a member of the Botanical and Ecological Societies of America, the American Association of University Professors, and the Sigma Xi Honorary Society.
The William Evans Lawrence Photographs consist of images taken by Lawrence of various locations in Oregon, California, and Nevada and three log books describing the images.
About half of the images were taken in California, where Lawrence spent a sabbatical year in 1942-1943. In addition to views of Stanford University, the California images also include Golden Gate Park, Shasta Dam, Lassen Park, the University of California in Berkeley, and the San Francisco World's Fair. The collection also includes images of Oregon landscapes -- such as the Oregon coast, Mount Hood, vegetation in the vicinity of the Marys River, and the Dallas region -- as well as the Oregon State College campus. The Oregon State campus views include images of the campus iris garden.
The log books were used by Lawrence to record the location, date, and camera settings for the photographs he made. The log books list the photographs in chronological order. Lawrence assigned a number to each entry in the log books; these correspond to numbers found on most of the slides held in this collection. Lawrence indicated in the log book if the image was discarded and the reason (e.g. over- or under-exposure, poor contrast, or inaccurate color). The log books cover the following time periods: Book No. I - 1938 to March 1941; Book No. II - April 1941 to June 20, 1943; Book No. III - June 20, 1943 to December 25, 1946.
The collection includes 1,145 color slides and 42 b/w negatives. All of the slides are 35 mm; some are in glass mounts. The negatives are 35 mm black-and-white. Most of the images are arranged in groups by topic.
Collection is open for research.
William Evans Lawrence Photographs (P 286), Oregon State University Special Collections & Archives Research Center, Corvallis, Oregon.
This collection is not fully processed; this guide is preliminary.
The materials were donated to the Special Collections & Archives Research Center by Richard Lawrence, the grandson of William Evans Lawrence, in 2012.
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