Finding aid updated March 2023.
Collection is open to the public. Collection must be used in Special Collections and University Archives Reading Room. Collection or parts of collection may be stored offsite. Please contact Special Collections and University Archives in advance of your visit to allow for transportation time.
Carrie K. Sweetser (1863-1952) was a watercolorist, life-long diarist, and devoted travel companion of her botanist husband. She was married for fifty-two years to Albert Raddin Sweetser (1861-1940), professor of botany and founder of the University of Oregon Herbarium in Eugene.
Carolyn Knowles Phinney was born in Centerville, Massachusetts, on September 11, 1863. She married Albert Sweetser in Centerville on February 29, 1888.
In 1897, the Sweetsers came to Oregon, where Albert's first teaching post was at Pacific University. He moved to the University of Oregon in 1902, and the couple remained in Eugene until their deaths.
On botanical exploring and collecting trips, the Sweetsers took many photographs, and Carrie painted wildflowers and fungi.
Albert Sweetser died in 1940; Carrie lived for another dozen years, passing away in Eugene, on September 9, 1952, at the age of eighty-nine. The couple had no children, but they were survived by the descendants of George Phinney, Carrie's nephew, whom they raised as their son.
The collection contains over two hundred large and oversize watercolor paintings of botany subjects, including wildflowers and fungi. Paintings were numbered and named by Sweetser, including in most cases with the common name and the Latin name.