Personal Papers
Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 7275, William Edwin Safford Papers
William Edwin Safford (1859-1926), botanist, was born in Chillicothe, Ohio. Safford graduated from the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1880, and served in the United States Navy from 1880 to 1890. He undertook postgraduate work at Yale University, 1883-1885, Harvard University, 1885, and finally received his Ph.D. from George Washington University in 1920. While serving in the Spanish-American War, Safford collected specimens for the Division of Ethnology, United States National Museum. In 1902, Safford accepted the position of assistant botanist, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), and became an economic botanist for the Bureau of Plant Industry, USDA, in 1915.
These papers consist of correspondence regarding Jean Nicolas Nicollet's expedition to Minnesota in 1836, a note concerning the identification of lakes on Nicollet's map, an account of Nicollet's expeditions of 1836, 1838-1839, and of plants collected during 1839; correspondence concerning information on plants in Mexico, the Philippine Islands, and Palestine; and a manuscript translating Jean Louis Berlandier's account of botanizing at Tamaulipas, Mexico.
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