Barbara Gittings personal papers

This collection offers an intimate window into Barbara Gittings's personal life. It documents some of Gittings's experience of going to university, learning of homosexuality, eventually failing out of university, and moving from her parents' home in Wilmington, Delaware to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It reveals personal interests outside of her activism such as bears, nature conservation, nudism, and rare books. It paints a picture of her family's temperament, background, and financial status (scrapbooks filled with photos and ephemera of travels throughout the world document the lives of wealthy, white Americans on either side of Gittings's family), as well as the nature of some of Gittings's familial relationships—especially in regard to family members like Katherine Anne Batchelder and Eleanor Gittings Taylor. Finally, legal and financial documents, as well as photos, from Gittings's later years leading up to her death give an idea of the activist's goings-on as she aged and settled in Wilmington, Delaware with Kay Tobin Lahusen.

Materials in this collection provide context for and supplement the current authority on Barbara Gittings's life, Tracey Baim's Barbara Gittings: Gay Pioneer (2014). This collection will be of interest to researchers of Barbara Gittings, the Gittings family history, or LGBT activist history in the United States.

The collection is organized into the following series: I. Personal papers, II. Documents, III. LGBT archives research, and IV. Items.

Series I, "Personal papers," spans the years 1867 to 2006. It contains the subseries: i. Early life (1932-1974; bulk 1932-1951); ii. Miscellaneous personal papers (1975-1991); iii. Subject files (1952-1974); iv. Katherine Anne Batchelder files (1931-2006); v. Gittings and Brooks families (1867-1996); and vi. Family scrapbooks and photo albums (1893-1956).

Some highlights from Series I include:

i. Early life: papers from grade school through to college, including materials from Gittings's pivotal time of discovery of her own homosexuality around the start of college. It documents some of Gittings's experience of going to university, learning of homosexuality, eventually failing out of university, and moving from her parents' home in Wilmington, Delaware to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

ii. Miscellaneous personal papers: this subseries includes a copy of the "Gays in Library Land" pamphlet, published in 1990, chronicling the work of the Gay and Lesbian Task Force of the American Library Association during its first 16 years of operation.

iii. Subject files: reveals personal interests outside of her activism such as bears, nature conservation, nudism, and rare books; as well as documents some of her involvement in the Philadelphia Chamber Chorus.

iv. Gittings and Brooks families: materials include documents and ephemera belonging to or referencing Gittings's paternal and maternal relatives—the Gittings and Brooks families—and include material types such as photographs, scrapbooks, correspondence, and medical and legal documents. The family member most represented in this subseries is Gittings's father John Sterett Gittings, Jr. This subseries paints a picture of her family's temperament, background, and financial status, as well as the nature of some of Gittings's familial relationships. This subseries also includes racist postcards and evidence of Nazi association by an unidentified member of Gittings's family; see "General Note" for more information.

Series II, "Documents," spans the years 1932 to 2006, with the bulk of the materials spanning 1990 to 2006. This series reflects the legal and financial activities of Gittings in her later life, leading up to her death in 2007. It contains the subseries: i. Guardianship (1985 to 1996; bulk 1991 to 1995); ii. Finances (1961 to 2007; bulk 2000-2006); and iii. Miscellaneous personal documents (1932-2007; bulk 1983-2007).

Some highlights from Series II include:

i. Guardianship: legal documents related to Gittings's guardianship of her mother Elizabeth "Mimi" Brooks and the intense legal battle between Eleanor Taylor Gittings and Barbara Gittings concerning this guardianship.

ii. Finances: taxes, bank statements, investment account statements, and donation receipts from Gittings's later life; access restricted by request of donor until 2027.

iii. Miscellaneous personal documents: here researchers can find documents like Gittings's will, health insurance documents, birth and other identifying documents, and miscellaneous membership documents.

Series III, "LGBT archives research," is a collection of correspondence, clippings, notes, and other ephemera gathered by Gittings and Lahusen during their research into LGBT archives in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the bulk of which focuses on repositories in the United States. This series is organized following an original schema that organized repositories by state. In particular, the Quatrefoil Library in Minnesota is robustly documented, and the collection includes several issues of the Quatrefolio newsletter dating from 1990 to 2006.

Series IV, "Items," houses Gittings's tuning fork.