Wild Flower Preservation Society of America Records (RA)

The New York Botanical Garden. All rights reserved. © 2005

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Background of the Wild Flower Preservation Society of America

In 1901 Olivia and Caroline Phelps Stokes presented three-thousand dollars to the New York Botanical Garden designated as the Olivia E. and Caroline Phelps Stokes Fund for the Protection of Native Plants. A monetary prize was established soliciting essays that would encourage a public dialogue regarding the preservation of both native and wild plants.

A portion of the Stokes Fund was earmarked for use as the Wild Flower Preservation Society of America in 1902 under the founder, Elizabeth Gertrude Knight Britton. Britton remained a driving force behind the organization until the mid-nineteen twenties.

The Society was incorporated by the state of New York in April of 1915.In addition to Elizabeth Britton, the Society's directors included Robert A. Harper, Arthur Hollick, Marshall A. Howe, and Norman Taylor. According to the certificate of incorporation, the goals of the organization were to encourage the preservation and protection of native plants, promote the enactment of laws furthering such preservation, organizing local societies, and to publish, print and disseminate literature to educate the public.

After 1924, the scope of the Society was restricted to the state of New York. Following this change of focus, in 1933 the Society was officially dissolved, as it was determined that the society's mission was being carried on effectively by the Garden Club of America, various state federations of garden clubs, and by the Wild Flower Preservation Society which had been established in 1925 in Washington, D.C. The remaining assets of the Society were turned over to the New York Botanical Garden to be added to the principal of the Olivia E. and Caroline Philips Stokes Fund.

Scope and Content

Records consist primarily of Britton's correspondence with local wild flower preservation groups in the United States. Prominent correspondents include Alice Owen Anderson, Margaret E. Allen, Edward Fuller Bigelow, Emma Lucy Braun, Thornton Waldo Burgess, Henry Chandler Cowles, Fanny Day Farwell, Charles Frederick Millspaugh, Percy L. Ricker, and Edgar T. Wherry. Also included is a small amount of correspondence conducted by Charles Louis Pollard, 1902-1903.

The collection includes materials on the history of the group, it's constitution, minutes, Stokes prize essays, articles written by Elizabeth Britton, club lists and literature, and promotional posters and buttons highlighting the WPFSA mission.

Restrictions

Access restrictions

This collection is open for research with permission from Mertz Library staff.

Copyright

Requests for permission to publish material from the collection should be submitted in writing to the LuEsther T. Mertz Library of the New York Botanical Garden.

Related Material

New York Botanical Garden.

WFPS (RA) Records of the Wild Flower Preservation Society

Administrative Information

Preferred Citation

Wild Flower Preservation Society of America (RA), Archives, The New York Botanical Garden.

Acquisition Information

This collection was retrospectivly accessioned on 8 January 1980. The original acccession number is x21.

Processing Information

Processed September 2005 by Kathleene Konkle under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) PA-50678-04.

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