Diaries/journals, 1897-1966

This collection consists of a wide variety of material documenting Marie Peary Stafford's life. There is a large amount of manuscript material including typescripts of her many publications, both books and stories submitted to magazines. The collection holds the published copies, the publishers’ contracts, reviews of her writings, and Marie’s notes for her stories. Also included are drafts of her lectures and speeches, extensive memos about various responsibilities she accepted as the daughter of a world-famous explorer and as a highly regarded expert on exploration herself. Her large manuscript in the form of a Greenland notebook relates to her work with the American-Danish Greenland Commission. She was also involved with the National Geographic Society, to which she donated Peary’s celebrated North Pole American flag. There is extensive correspondence among her papers: correspondence with her mother; some of the letters beginning in the later half of the 1910s forward; letters relating to Admiral Peary’s era and his accomplishments; letters from George Borup, the fiancé to whom she was never married; Viljhalmur Stefansson; and William Herbert Hobbs, her father’s first biographer. There is information about Robert Peary’s early career as a surveyor, documents which demonstrate the honors bestowed on Marie Peary Stafford, and copies of newspaper and magazine articles providing biographical information about her. Some of the collection’s highlights are the personal scrapbooks, journals and diaries, photographs, extensive ephemera and the personal artifacts.