The Dunham family in Seal Harbor, Maine, circa 1910
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The collection represents four generations of the Dunham, Parker, Kellogg, and Dows families, from the 1850s to the 1950s. Edward Wood Dunham (1794-1871), a banker in New York City, married Maria Smyth Parker (1794-1834) of Perth Amboy, New Jersey. His son, Carroll Dunham (1828-1877), a doctor and dean of faculty at the New York Homeopathic Medical College, married Harriet E. Kellogg (1828-1878). Their son, Edward Kellogg Dunham (1860-1922), was a noted pathologist who taught at Bellevue Medical College and, during World War I, researched and treated meningitis and empyema cases in U.S. Army hospitals.
Edward's wife, Mary Dows Dunham (1865-1936), and their daughter, Theodora Dunham Bodman (1895-1983), both volunteered for the American Fund for French Wounded (AFFW) during World War I, an organization which provided medical and material aid to wounded soldiers and refugees. Theodora served in France with the AFFW from 1916 to 1917 and Mary organized volunteers to send relief packages overseas for distribution by the AFFW workers there. Dunhams resided in both New York City and Seal Harbor on Mount Desert Island, Maine. They were involved in a number of philanthropic activities, as well as civic improvement and public health in Seal Harbor.
The Dunham Family Papers consist of 20 linear feet of correspondence, writings, medical research, family histories, genealogies, scrapbooks, diaries, commonplace books, financial records, minutes, reports, legal documents, artwork, photographs, and memorabilia representing four generations of an American family from 1814 to 1951.
The collection documents the medical education, research, and professional activities of doctors Carroll Dunham and Edward Kellogg Dunham, Sr. in the late nineteenth andearly twentieth centuries; World War I volunteer work of Theodora Dunham Bodman (see also the Bodman Family); and the philanthropic work of Edward and Mary Dows Dunham and their son, Edward Kellogg Dunham, Jr. in New York City and in Seal Harbor, Maine. Also included are creative writings such as family "magazines;" artwork; and travel correspondence, diaries, and photographs of Europe, Egypt, Panama, and the western U.S.
