Scope and Content Note
The papers of Lewis Reeves Gibbes (1810-1894) span the years 1793-1894, with the bulk of the material from Gibbes's tenure as a professor at the College of Charleston, 1838-1894. The collection consists almost entirely of correspondence received, but also includes clippings, calling cards , resolutions, scientific circulars, announcements, specimen lists, reports of experiments, various memorabilia, and some copies of letters sent which were nearly all typed or written by others after Gibbes's death.
Also in the collection are letters received by two of Gibbes's forebears, Robert Gibbes and Lewis S. Gibbes. Dating from 1793 to the late 1820s, they vary in content from an item of 1800 commenting on the recent national elections, to correspondence relating to St. John's Protestant Episcopal Church, John's Island, South Carolina, to a series of letters from the guardian of a family member studying at Harvard College. An addendum to the collection contains correspondence of James MacBride , 1784-1817, a South Carolina botanist whose papers were included among the original purchase of the Gibbes Papers. Included are letters from Thomas Smith Grimké and John C. Calhoun when he was a young congressman active in the cause of war with Britain, 1811-1813.
Scion of a prominent South Carolinian family, Lewis Gibbes returned to South Carolina after medical study abroad in the mid-1830s to become professor of mathematics, physics, and astronomy at the College of Charleston. His papers document extensive connections with educators and university administrators, particularly in the South and focus on scientific and research undertakings. An early contributor to the Smithsonian Institution, he was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. The Civil War interrupted but did not terminate his correspondence with scientists outside the Confederacy.
The Gibbes Papers are as much a source of information about the work of Gibbes's peers as of his own studies. Important correspondents include Alexander Dallas Bache, James D. Dana, Asa Gray, and Joseph Henry, all of whom shared technical data and exchanged botanical, zoological, or geological specimens. The correspondence with Gray is especially notable for the longevity of their communication and because it includes copies of Gibbes's replies. Other significant material includes descriptions of experiments, specifications for laboratory devices, meteorological readings, circulars containing news of recent publications and announcements of scientific meetings, astronomical reports from observatories around the nation, communications with publishers and manufacturers of scientific instruments, and field reports from colleagues and former students throughout the United States and Europe.
There is little concerning Gibbes's private life in these papers. Two exceptions are the letters he received from Robert W. Gibbes prior to the Civil War and letters from S. P. Ravenel after the war. Other than a letter Gibbes wrote to his brother John while a student at South Carolina College in 1828, the collection contains no correspondence with immediate family members.
Additional correspondents include Stephen Alexander, Jacob Whitman Bailey, E. R. Beadle, Amos Binney, Langdon Cheves, Thomas Cooper, James D. B. DeBow, Henry William DeSaussure, Charles Ellet, Elizabeth Fries Lummis Ellet, James Espy, Alex M. Forster, Benjamin Apthorp Gould, Samuel Steman Haldeman, Edward Claudius Herrick, John Lawrence LeConte, Joseph LeConte, Elias Loomis, Joseph Lovering, G. E. Manigault, Francis Markoe, Matthew Fontaine Maury, C. G. Memminger, Robert Treat Paine, James L. Petigru, C. C. Pinckney, William C. Redfield, E. S. Ritchie, John Daniel Runkle, Jared Sparks, William Stimpson, David Humphreys Storer, William Henry Trescot, M. Tuomey, Joseph Winlock, and William Wurdemann.