The collection has been extracted from a large volume of material which Scott presented to the Historical Society over the course of many years. Much of this material, which was collected as a result of Scott's wide-ranging interest in conservation, was not properly part of the personal collection established in his name, and this material was distributed instead to other sections or departments of the Historical Society or used to establish collections in the names of other individuals or organizations. Still other material, particularly much of the documentation on the Wisconsin Conservation Commission, was discarded because it duplicated records in the State Archives. Among the collections to which Scott added are the papers of Wilhelmine La Budde, Aroline Schmidt, and S. Paul Jones and the records of the Izaac Walton League; the Wisconsin Natural Resources History Project; the Wisconsin Society for Ornithology; the Citizens Natural Resources Association of Wisconsin; the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters; the Wisconsin Natural Resources Foundation; and the University League. The remaining Scott collection is divided into two groups of papers: personal papers and subject files.
The PERSONAL PAPERS, which primarily contain papers of Scott's own creation, comprise only a small part of the collection; unfortunately they reveal little of Scott's personality and interests. Included are biographical materials; issues of the newsy “Hickory Hill Herald,” the annual Scott family Christmas letter; bird-watching notebooks; and articles and a few of the over 2000 speeches Scott is reputed to have written. These files also contain two folders of correspondence: one from Margaret Elizabeth Armstrong, a Canadian missionary in Toyama, Japan, who helped Scott in his counter-intelligence work after World War II, and another from Dr. and Mrs. Manfred Ludicke and Dr. Friedrich Goethe, Germans to whom the Scotts sent packages of books and clothing after the war. Miss Armstrong's letters are mainly concerned with everyday matters such as life at the mission and the mission school, but they also offer some insight into Japan during the Allied Occupation. Accompanying Miss Armstrong's correspondence are several photographs and a narrative by a Japanese which she interpreted concerning events before, during and after the August 1945 bombing of Toyama.
The SUBJECT FILES consist of material collected by Scott in the course of his many activities and as research material for an intended history of Wisconsin conservation. These files represent only a small portion of the garage-full of reference materials which Scott once had in his possession. Within the files are reports and correspondence on various environmental causes with which Scott was involved, notably: pesticides in Lake Michigan (1968) and Project Sanguine (1969-1971). The files also include papers and some original historical documents relating to public lands matters which Scott reportedly salvaged from wastebaskets at the State Capitol. He also collected material on famous Wisconsin conservationists, including miscellaneous correspondence of Ernest Swift, former director of the Wisconsin Conservation Department. Under the heading Wisconsin Duck Hunters Association are three folders of original correspondence of Ernest May, president of that association, pertaining to the Rock Prairie Goose Refuge and changes in Wisconsin's goose hunting laws. It is not known how Scott acquired this correspondence. A number of miscellaneous speeches, reports, and papers have been filed under the category entitled “writings of others”; included are papers by Aldo Leopold, Adolph Kanneberg, and Ernest Swift.
