This collection is also known as the Historic Letters collection.

This collection, ca. 1838-1892, includes the personal correspondence of Asa Gray and Sereno Watson, official correspondence of other Herbarium staff, and a small amount of correspondence of noted botanists who were not affiliated with Harvard. Gray correspondence contains letters from several of the most distinguished European and American scientists of the 19th century, including George Bentham, Charles Darwin, Joseph Henry, Joseph Dalton Hooker, William Jackson Hooker, and John Torrey. Letters include important biographical information and also document the early history of botany in the United States. The Darwin correspondence contains a letter to Gray establishing Darwin's precedence in developing a theory of natural selection.

Gray Correspondence Files, Archives of the Gray Herbarium, Harvard University Herbaria.

Letters of George Bentham, Charles Darwin, Joseph Dalton Hooker, Joseph Prestele, Charles Wilkins Short, Joachim Steetz, Thomas Minott Peters, and Truman George Yuncker are available on microfilm.

The Gray Herbarium originated with the gift of Asa Gray's herbarium and library to Harvard in 1864. Early curators and directors were Sereno Watson (1874-1892); Benjamin Lincoln Robinson (1892-1935); and Merritt Lyndon Fernald (1935-1947).

Finding aids available online.

Selected letters of Asa Gray were published in: Gray, Jane Loring, ed. Letters of Asa Gray (1893).