photographs

Photographs, correspondence, genealogical charts and notes, newsclippings and printed materials related to the Townsend and Burford families of Texas dating back to pre-Republic of Texas era. The town now known as Round Top, TX, on Cummins Creek, was previously known as Townsend, TX. Many of the Townsend family members participated in the Battle of San Jacinto. Both the Townsends and the Burfords have been very active in civic life.

This collection consists of the physical materials that are represented digitally in the Travelers in the Middle East Archive (TIMEA), a collection created to make possible the study of Western interactions with the Middle East, particularly travel to Egypt in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The materials are of diverse types: images in the forms of post cards, photographs, and stereograph films; articles, pamphlets, and travel guidebooks; maps, and souvenirs.

The records of the Twenty-Six Literary Club document the activities of this women’s social and philanthropic club established in 1909 by a group of Houston women residing in the Woodland Heights neighborhood. Some members’ daughters became students at the Rice Institute (later University) after it opened in 1912 and continued the Club, expanding its membership over the years and engaging in various community projects, including providing scholarships for young women entering Rice.

This collection is made up of eight boxes containing books, bulletins, correspondence, event materials, financial records, flyers, newspaper clippings, pamphlets, photographs, plaques, programs, scrapbooks, videos, and yearbooks from United Orthodox Synagogues spanning from 1935 to 2023.

These photographs taken during the U.S. Civil War reflect a wide range of battles and sites, although not all are represented. The collection includes 84 photographs mounted on 8″ × 91/2″ boards, many labelled with caption information. The photographs were taken by a variety of photographers, including Mathew B. Brady and Alexander Gardner, and many have been published in "The Photographic History of the Civil War" or which are also available through the National Archives.

Photographic prints, glass plate negatives and other equipment and supplies related to professional portraiture by Vera Prasilova Scott, mainly dating from 1926-1937 during her time in Houston close to the Rice Institute. Houston and Rice University-related subjects include the Lovett, Baker, Blaffer, Cullinan, Wiess, Hutcheson, Autrey and Sharp families.

The Camille Waggaman/Waggaman Family Collection consists largely of photographs and newspaper articles but also includes some personal correspondence and memorabilia. The bulk of the material regards Camille Waggaman and focuses upon her radio career (1932-1963) and upon the years after her retirement. Regional or local historians may find these of interest since the Waggamans were among the most prominent plantation families of Louisiana.

The Wagman family photos offer a glimpse into the growth of a Jewish family that immigrated from Romania in the early 1900s and made a place for themselves in America. Interconnected with several other Jewish families in the Houston area, the Wagman family photographs fill out the genealogical web that intertwines much of the Houston Jewish community.

This collection is comprised of materials which Waldo Greene, a student of Thornton Wilder's, gathered about Wilder during Wilder's lifetime and up until Greene's death. Included among these materials are correspondence, bibliographies, newspaper and journal clippings, photographs, playbills, and copies of Wilder's typewritten journals.

Correspondence, scrapbooks, business papers, ledgers, tributes and memorials, audiotapes of oral history interviews, clippings, photos, and other papers of Sharp and his wife, Estelle (Boughton) Sharp, active in Houston, Tex., civic and philanthropic affairs. Topics include oil industry, lives of the Sharp family, Howard Hughes family, growth of Houston, Spindletop Oil Field, founding of the Texas Company and Sharp-Hughes Tool Company, and establishment of United Charities.