Search

The Meserve-Kunhardt Collection chiefly consists of photographic material, as well as papers and realia that document the work of Frederick Hill Meserve. A collector and distributor of photographs from 1897 to his death in 1962, Meserve built an extensive collection of material related to Abraham Lincoln as well as other persons, sites, and events of the long nineteenth century. The collection also documents the stewardship and development of the collection from 1962 to 2015 by his descendants, especially his daughter, Dorothy Turner Meserve Kunhardt. The material in the collection provides rich visual documentation of United States history, especially persons, sites, and events during the American Civil War, and details the emergence of photography as a distinctive cultural practice into the early twentieth century.