Francis Harper was born on November 17, 1886, in Southbridge, Massachusetts. His father, William Harper, who was Canadian and born in Ontario, studied in the United States and also in Germany, where he met Francis’ mother, Bertha Tauber. William Harper was a preacher and a teacher, eventually becoming a superintendent of schools in Massachusetts, Georgia, and New York.

Francis had two brothers and two sisters: Roland, a botanist for the Alabama State Geological Survey in Tuscaloosa, AL; Otto, an insurance salesman in Napa, CA; Hermina, poet and editor in Charlotte, NC; and Wilhelmina, a librarian at Redwood City, CA (throughout their correspondence, both Roland and Wilhelmina addressed Francis as “Booie”).

In 1923, Harper married Jean Sherwood of Cornwall, New York. Jean Sherwood had served as tutor to Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt’s children, Anna and Elliot, and was active all of her life in women’s and environmental causes.

Francis and Jean had four children: Mary Sherwood, born in 1926, always called “Molly”; Robert Francis, born in 1928, always called “Robin”; Lucy Lee, born in 1933, nicknamed “Boobles”; and David Bartram, born in 1937, nicknamed “Diddy.”

Dr. Harper was a “naturalist” in the earlier sense of the word, taking all of nature as his province: plants, insects, fish, amphibians, birds, mammals, and people (and their languages and culture).

He attended Cornell University from 1903 to 1905, 1912 to 1914, and 1921 to 1924, earning an AB in 1914 and a PhD in 1925. From 1917 to 1919 he served in the United States Army in France with the 79th division and then in New York and Maryland.

After completing his doctor’s degree, except for a short stint at Swarthmore College, Harper did not aspire to be a college professor. Instead, he made his living from grants or from working for museums, government agencies, committees and commissions, and research agencies. Among these were the Boston Society of Natural History, the American Society of Mammalogists, the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, the Smithsonian Institution, the National Science Foundation, the Arctic Institute, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.

He participated in numerous scientific expeditions to Canada and the Okefinokee Swamp, as well as throughout the southeastern U.S. in search of the route of the Bartrams. From these he produced a whole series of studies and publications. Among his colleagues, the best known of Harper’s publications were the studies of the caribou of Keewatin, the birds of the Ungava Peninsula, the Ungava Montagnais, and the extinct and vanishing mammals of the Old World. His major contribution, however, is the Yale University Press edition of William Bartram’s Travels (1958).

His publications do not adequately reflect the range of his interests. His letters are replete with references to subjects that were especially important to him. Chief among these is the Okefinokee Swamp: the environment, its people, and their culture. Harper owned land in the Okefinokee and was accepted by its inhabitants. He studied their language and arts, making recordings for the Library of Congress of their music and "hollerin’" as he called it. He was also a fierce defender of the integrity of the Swamp and was instrumental, with Jean Sherwood’s influence, in having the Okefinokee declared a National Wildlife Refuge.

He also pursued Bartram flora (Franklinia and Elliotta), Native American mounds, and tree frogs (Psuedacris), and involved himself in debates ranging from fire ant control to his opposition to racial integration. All in all, what the letters reveal are strongly held, often passionate and contrarian, opinions concerning important biological and social issues of his time.

Many of Harper’s correspondents were also his life-long friends. A glance at the finding aid reveals that some of those to whom letters were addressed in the first decade of the twentieth century were still writing to him when he died. Much of the exchange concerned scientific matters, but much of it also concerned social and political issues as well as domestic news. A study of the subjects contained in the letters reveals a lively interest in most current issues. In addition, the correspondence includes information about both the Harper and Sherwood extended families.

Harper died on November 17, 1972, on his 86th birthday. Although he remained active in his profession right up until the time of his death, he left several major projects unfinished. One was a book about the people and lore of the Okefinokee Swamp. Okefinokee Album, by Francis Harper and Delma E. Presley, was published posthumously by the University of Georgia Press in 1981.