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Title: Marcus E. Jones papers
Dates: 1862-2017 (bulk 1878-1934)
Collection Number: MS.1
Creator/Collector:
Jones, Marcus E. (Marcus Eugene), 1852-1934
Extent: 65.5 linear feet (105 boxes and slide projector)
Repository:
California Botanic Garden
Claremont, California 91711
Abstract: The collection consists of photographic materials, correspondence, diaries, publications, and manuscripts by American botanist
and geologist Marcus E. Jones.
Language of Material: English
The collection is open to research.
Copyright of the materials in this collection is held by California Botanic Garden.
Marcus E. Jones papers. California Botanic Garden
The collection was deposited at Pomona College after Jones’s death in 1934. In the 1950s, Jones’s papers and herbarium were
transferred to California Botanic Garden.
Biography/Administrative History
Marcus E. Jones (1852-1934) was a botanist who collected and described plants across the western United States and Mexico
during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was born in Ohio and attended Grinnell College (at the time Iowa College).
In the late 1870s, he made his first botanical collecting trips to the western United States and settled in Salt Lake City
in 1880 with his wife Anna Richardson, where they worked as teachers. Although he was not formally educated as a botanist,
he went on to describe over 900 plant taxa over the course of his career. He wrote numerous works on botany, mining, and other
subjects, including his self-published journal, Contributions to Western Botany, and Revision to the North American Species
of Astragalus (1923).
After the death of his wife in 1915, Jones sold his herbarium and library to Pomona College and moved to Claremont, California
in 1923, where he continued his travels and botanical work until his death in a car accident in 1934.
Scope and Content of Collection
The collection consists of photographs, negatives, diaries, correspondence, published and unpublished manuscripts, and newspaper
clippings collected by Jones, covering his work and travels from the 1870s until his death in 1934. Especially well-represented
in the collection are photographs of plants and landscapes of the western United States and Mexico, as well as glass negatives
of Astragalus specimens, a plant genus Jones studied extensively.
Botanists
Plants--Classification
Black-and-white negatives
Black-and-white prints (photographs)
Correspondence
Field notes
Lantern slides
Glass plate negatives
Manuscripts (documents)