Frick Laboratory catalog and registrar notebooks: Frick series
Scope and Contents
The relationship between the American Museum of Natural History and the Childs Frick Corporation has been in existence since 1923. The activities of the Corporation consisted in carrying on field explorations for the fossilized remains of extinct mammals of the late Tertiary-Quaternary in areas located in the states of New Mexico, Nebraska, Wyoming, Kansas, North and South Dakota, California, Alaska, etc. The recovered remains were sent to the Frick Laboratory at the American Museum of Natural History, New York, and to the Millstone Laboratory, Roslyn, Long Island, a laboratory facility Childs Frick maintained in conjunction with his home. At these two laboratories, the fossilized specimens were prepared for study, preserved for future scientific endeavors, and used as material data for the publication of monographic studies. In 1966 the Childs Frick Corporation and the American Museum of Natural History entered into a formal agreement by which the Frick specimen collections were transferred to the Museum and housed in the Frick Building endowed by funds from the Childs Frick Corporation. The collection of notebooks represents the historical records of the Frick Laboratories, such as specimen shipping records from the field to the laboratories; specimen record keeping activities of cataloging, inventorying, and taxonomic indexing; and specimen field notes and locality descriptions.
The collection consists of 3 binders from the Frick Collection numbered S 2A-4A labelled Camel Old Lists, Registrar - Mastodonts in Mr. Frick's 1933 Mastodon Book, and Blair's List - Mastodon, Mammoth. The binders are lists of Frick Lab collected material from the 1920's to 1930's. They are a mix of typed and handwritten pages. Specimens are listed individually by their Frick Lab number or AMNH catalog number, if one was assigned, with a brief description of the material and collecting locality.
Binder 1 - Camel Old Lists. List of Frick Lab collected camels from Texas, mainly Higgins and Clarendon areas. Includes a few pages of measurements of some specimens.
Binder 2 - Registrar - Mastodonts in Mr. Frick's 1933 Mastodon Book. List of Frick lab collected mastodonts from ~1924-1933 from a variety of localities, including Nebraska, California, and Texas. Includes a list of Frick mastodonts on exhibit, a list of mastodon skeletal element measurements, and a list of discarded material.
Binder 3 - Blair's List - Mastodon, Mammoth. List of Frick Lab collected mastodonts from the 1930's from several localities, including Nebraska, Texas, and Oklahoma. Includes a list of mastodon material delivered to the Osborn lab for exhibit, a list of immature specimens, and a list of published mastodon material.
Dates
- circa 1920s-1930s
Creator
- American Museum of Natural History. Frick Laboratories (Organization)
Conditions Governing Access
This collection is housed in the Division of Paleontology. Please contact the collection manager for access; materials are sometimes restricted. https://www.amnh.org/research/paleontology/collections/vertebrate-paleontology-archives
Extent
0.5 Linear Feet (3 notebooks)
Language of Materials
English
Arrangement
Arranged by specimen number.
Creator
- American Museum of Natural History. Frick Laboratories (Organization)
- Title
- American Museum of Natural History. Frick Laboratory catalog and registrar notebooks: Frick series, circa 1920s-1930s
- Author
- Melissa Silvestri, Allyson Mellone, Alana Gishlick, 2021
- Date
- 2021 August
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
- Sponsor
- Minimal level collection record created with support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) Museums for America grant, 2020.
Repository Details
Part of the Department of Vertebrate Paleontology Archives Repository
200 Central Park West
New York NY 10024-5192