The Papers offer an uneven picture of a professionally and socially active woman whose life and values may have been similar to many twentieth-century women with similar educational and social experiences.
The Diaries are perfunctory. Although Mrs. Davies made entries with almost unbroken daily regularity from 1937 through 1975, the entries are very short due to the restrictions of space in the small five-year diaries she used most often. They concern the weather, dates with her hairdresser, house hunting, frustrations of packing to travel or move residences, and minor health setbacks of herself and her husband. There is little of what she felt or believed, and what is recorded is not pursued. Her Republican political leanings can be noted, as can holiday gifts and menus, from whom cards were received on her birthday and anniversary, and significant moments in her life and in the lives of friends and relatives. She mentions outstanding national and international events, but seldom her reaction to them. The early diaries are more catholic through the 1940s, the period of her own involvement in the federal bureaucracy. Here there are brief descriptions of her work situation, of coal price hearings, employment discrimination against women, and of events relating to the war (1939-1945). For the most part, however, the diaries are personal and limited social history.
The Correspondence, letters from relatives, friends, and associates, makes up about one-half of the collection. Mrs. Davies kept very few copies of the letters she wrote, but the incoming letters are often interesting and as varied as Hazel Davies's interests. It is an intermittent file but spans most of her life. A February 21, 1944 letter filed under General Correspondence from Hazel Davies to Malvina Lindsay, a Washington Post correspondent, shows a little of Mrs. Davies's style and philosophy in a discussion of the home front during World War II. In this file also are two letters (1948, 1949) from a German Ph.D., Frau Helene Weltring, mentioning the Marshall Plan and Germany's postwar struggle. Letters to George Davies are from his mother late in her life, an 1885 letter from an aunt written as a story for the then six year-old George, and a card dating from his retirement, November 30, 1948. The correspondence with Jane (Gore) Ready, Hazel Davies's half-sister, includes a few letters from Jane Gore's childhood and one from Hazel Davies to her sister returned-to-sender after Jane Ready's death in 1976.
Jennings Seminary correspondence, 1903-1907, includes letters from students, a letter of reference from the principal, clippings, and the 1906 senior class-meeting notebook. A fire destroyed the upper floors of the building on March 18, 1906, two months before Hazel Davies graduated, and the senior class was moved to the Chicago Training School for the remainder of its last term. There is some mention of this facility in the file also. The material in this file gives an exceptionally clear picture of boarding school life and the scholarly and social interests and activities of young women during the first decade of the twentieth-century.
Lake Tomahawk correspondence is a very general file also including notes, drafts, and clippings relating primarily to articles Mrs. Davies wrote about Lake Tomahawk environs and personalities for the Lakeland Times (Minocqua). Mrs. Davies's letters and articles in the St. Luke's Hospital School of Nursing Alumni Association correspondence reveal as much about her life from 1908 to 1918 and after 1957 as they do about St. Luke's Hospital School of Nursing in the early period. Included are a nursing school brochure, circa 1950s; a list of all graduates to 1962; by-laws of the group; programs; and newsletters. Grothem Oertling had been an office clerk in Mrs. Davies'coal commission office before entering the army in February 1943. His letters from Miami and Ohio discuss his army training in some detail and report on gossip from the coal commission office. The caption, “Kings of the Broad Highway,” on a postcard, January 5, 1944, “reflects so much that we feel inside of ourselves,” Oertling writes after completing his officer's training. Oertling was married to Frances Reynolds, daughter of North Carolina Senator, Robert Rice Reynolds (Dem.).
Lt. Col. Frances M. (Ready) McClurkin, the daughter of Jane (Gore) Ready and a registered nurse, enlisted in the United States Air Force in 1955. During the Vietnam War, as her final assignment, she served as commanding officer of Clark Air Force Hospital, Philippines. Her letters to her aunt begin in 1935 when she was ten and continue through 1975. Her work, travels, assignments, promotion, marriage, all facets of her career as an army air force nurse are mentioned in her letters. Letters from Relatives and Friends include those letters written by a girlhood friend from Hortonville, Wisconsin, letters from Hazel Davies's nieces, Jeanette and Isabelle Ready, her grandnephews and nieces, and from her father and his wife from Irma, Wisconsin. Dorothy (Rosser) Neill was a Lancashire County, England, librarian who in 1950 at age 42 began a correspondence with Hazel Davies through the British-American Friendship organization. Their correspondence continued at least through 1973 and includes an autobiographical letter from Hazel Davies in 1950 and discussions of conditions in England and the lives and philosophies of the two women. The correspondence dealing with the Women's Club of Ashton Heights, Virginia, includes historical notes about the founding of the club and its early years by Hazel Davies, and other fiftieth-anniversary letters and program plans.
Family Records consist of legal and official documents, lists, budgets and other family papers. None of these files except the Records of the Tomahawk Home are comprehensive. John R. Davies's notebook (filed in box 2, folder 13) consists of notes on construction and cost of a pressed paper railroad car wheel he invented and which tested out successfully at Pullman, Illinois. Samples of the pressed paper used in the wheel have been sent to the State Historical Society Museum. John R. Davies, a foundryman, was the grandfather of George G. Davies (Hazel Davies' husband) and the father of John E. Davies, whose estate papers are also filed here. The Biographical and Genealogical records, a collection of clippings, booklets and photographs, relate primarily to Robert E. Lee and the Lee family of Virginia, for Hazel Davies's father was believed to be descended from a cousin of General Robert E. Lee. Included also are typed and handwritten notes and biographical sketches relating to Hazel Davies, John R. Davies, Myrtle Carter and William John Lee. The Doodles, Poems and Weather Calendars and the Sketches are those done by Hazel Lee as a child. There is one sketch of a “typical boarding school scene” done at Jennings Seminary. Miscellany includes notes on the collection prepared by Hazel Davies to accompany her gift of the papers to the Historical Society. Additional notes penned by Mrs. Davies have been attached to the documents she described throughout the collection.
The Scrapbook has been microfilmed due to its deteriorating condition. (The original has not been retained.) It contains poems and maxims of special meaning to Mrs. Davies as well as letters, newspaper clippings and memorabilia from and about the Davies and Ready families, and is most informative for the period the Davies lived and worked in Washington, D.C. There is material relating to the U.S. Coal Commission, employment discrimination against married women, the National Recovery Administration, the United Mine Workers, World War II, and John L. Lewis. There are several more of Malvina Lindsay's bylined articles pasted to pages of the scrapbook.
Visual Materials include photographs and negatives, 1872-1970s, consisting primarily of albums compiled and made by Hazel Lee Davies, including images of her family, friends, school, work, and travels. Albums and other photographs are well-identified. A small amount of ephemera and postcards are included; some postcards were received from friends and family and include correspondence. Photographs include cabinet cards and a small number of tintypes. Negatives, circa 1911-1970s, consist primarily of nitrate and correspond in large part to prints contained in the albums.
