The Frederick L. Wellman Papers contain items relating to Wellman's plant pathology research. The collection includes correspondence, reports, publications, newspaper articles, manuscript materials, and photographs detailing Wellman's work on Fusarium and coffee rust disease (Hemileia vastatrix). Items in this collection date from 1915 to 1981, with the bulk of the materials dating from the 1950s to the early 1970s.
Frederick Lovejoy Wellman (1897-1994) was a plant pathologist most known for his reasearch on coffee rust disease (Hemileia vastatrix). Wellman also studied other plant diseases, chiefly in Latin America.
Frederick Lovejoy Wellman
After graduation, Wellman began work as a plant pathologist for the United Fruit Company in Honduras. Wellman focused on Fusarium oxysporum , a fungus that causes disease in bananas. Wellman also worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Inter-American Institute of Agricultural Sciences (IICA or Instituto Interamericano de Ciencias Agriacute;colas) in Turrialba, Costa Rica. In addition, he was the head of the Department of Plant Pathology and Botany at the Agricultural Experiment Station at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras. Throughout his career, Wellman traveled around the world studying coffee and preparing for coffee rust's eventual spread to the western hemisphere. By the time he retired, he had spent 24 years in the tropics, one year in Turkey, and one year near the equator.
Upon his retirement from the University of Puerto Rico in
Wellman was an active leader in the plant pathology community. He founded the Caribbean Division of the American Phytopathological Society (APS), serving as its first president. He also served as councilor of the division and chairman of the APS Committee on International Cooperation. The Caribbean Division of the APS awarded him with the Award of Merit for distinguished service in
In addition to the APS, Wellman was a member of Sigma Xi, Phi Sigma, the Washington Academy of Sciences, and the Puerto Rico Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was also a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
In his personal life, Wellman was married to Dora U'Ren Wellman for 72 years. The couple had one son, Frederick Creighton Wellman IV. Wellman died in Raleigh 21 April 1994. His wife predeceased him on 24 December 1990.
The Frederick L. Wellman papers document to Wellman's plant pathology research in Latin America as well as his work as a visiting and emeritus professor at North Carolina State University. This collection contains Wellman's essays, publications, reports, correspondence, newspaper clippings, awards, and photographs detailing his work on the plant diseases Fusarim and coffee rust disease (Hemileia vastatrix). Also included are some materials about Wellman's early research on celery and tomatoes. The photographs depict this research, as well as many views of the Latin American landscape and views of everyday life for a portion of the Latin American population.
This collection is divided into nine series: Publications, Teaching Materials, Research, Awards and Conferences, Memorabilia, Personnel Information, Manuscript Materials, Oversize Materials, and Photographs.
Publications is divided into three subseries: Writings, United Fruit Company Reports, and Collected Works.
Research is also divided into three subseries: Proposals, Coffee Research, and Other Research.
The nature of the NC State University Libraries' Special Collections means that copyright or other information about restrictions may be difficult or even impossible to determine despite reasonable efforts. The NC State University Libraries claims only physical ownership of most Special Collections materials.
The materials from our collections are made available for use in research, teaching, and private study, pursuant to U.S. Copyright law. The user must assume full responsibility for any use of the materials, including but not limited to, infringement of copyright and publication rights of reproduced materials. Any materials used for academic research or otherwise should be fully credited with the source.
This collection may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations. Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which North Carolina State University assumes no responsibility.
[Identification of item], Frederick L. Wellman Papers, MC 00347, Special Collections Research Center, North Carolina State University Libraries, Raleigh, NC
Collection transferred from NC State University Plant Pathology Department, 2003 December (Accession no. 2003.0019).
The collection is organized into nine principal series:
This series contains books, articles, and reports written by Wellman and other scientists in his field. Common themes in these publications include Fusarium and coffee rust (Hemileia vastatrix). The series is divided into three sections: Writings, United Fruit Company Reports, and Collected Works.
Writings are arranged chronologically, ranging from 1922 to 1981. Although Wellman is most well known for his coffee research, his early publications include topics such as celery, tomatoes, and timber. His earliest paper in this collection is entitled Hot Water and Mercuric Chloride Treatments on Some Brassica Seeds and their Effect Both on the Germination of the Seeds and the Viability of the Fungus Phoma Lingam. Wellman wrote this paper as a student at the University of Wisconsin. Other early works include a journal article, Relation of Temperature to Spore Germination and Growth of Urocystis cepulae, co-authored by J. C. Walker, and an abstract of Wellman's thesis, Studies Upon the Clubroot of Crucifers. Other works include reprints from the Journal of Agricultural Research, Science, and Phytopathology.
Also included are two reviews of Wellman's works, one of Coffee, Botany, Cultivation, and Utilization, and the other of Tropical American Plant Disease.
When necessary, correspondence is attached to a report in order to put the letter and the report in proper context.
United Fruit Company Reports consist of 14 reports originally kept confidential by the United Fruit Company in Tela, Honduras. These reports are arranged chronologically, and range from 1915 to 1930. The earliest report is a draft of a report about Panama banana disease, written by Professor Prescott. Other reports are written by Horace A. Dean, Wellman, T. J. Grant, and M. M. Manns. The subject of the reports consists mostly of bananas, the United Fruit Company's main crop.
Collected Works are arranged alphabetically. This collection includes works such as Eddie Echandi's Manual de Laboratorio para Fitopatologia General, a collection of the Journal of Coffee Research, and Joseph A. Tosi's Zonas de Vida Natural en el Peru.
4.25 archival boxes
1.5 archival boxes
0.5 archival boxes
2.25 archival boxes
Items in this series include lectures, outlines, and drawings used by Wellman for teaching purposes. Included are Wellman's mycology notebook (in Spanish), plant disease lectures given by Wellman in 1962 and minutes of the 18 December 1957 Graduate Council at the Inter-American Institute of Agricultural Sciences in Turrialba, Costa Rica.
Materials from North Carolina State University include a 1964 written examination from Phytopathology II, notes and lectures from the two-year Neotropical Phytopathology seminar series, and 1969 notes from PP 608, History of Plant Pathology.
The final folder in this series deals with public relations. Included are several ideas to make the public more aware of plant pathology, including notes for the television series Not Enough and a series of memos about famine.
0.75 archival boxes
This series contains information regarding various aspects of Wellman's research. The series is divided into three parts: Proposals, Coffee Research, and Other Research. All materials are arranged chronologically.
Proposals span from 1944 to 1962. Included is correspondence and reports regarding Wellman's research ideas, including a 1946 letter to Dr. Nathaniel E. Winters proposing studies on market diseases in plants in El Salvador. Wellman has drawn an arrow to Winters's name and written Turned it down. Other proposals include book publications, classification of causal organisms and effects in tropical American plant diseases, and Wellman's plans for field service consultant.
Wellman's coffee research mainly revolves around coffee rust disease (Hemileia vastatrix). Included is correspondence regarding the rust. Early coffee rust correspondence portrays tactics to prevent the rust from spreading to the western hemisphere. Later correspondence details the rust's effects after it hit the Latin American coffee crop. Also included are coffee rust reports, including the reports from the World Coffee Mission in 1951 and 1952, copies of the Foreign Agriculture Circular, ponencias de la asamblea, newspaper stories, and coffee rust alerts.
Other research includes drawings, charts, and notes about other topics, mainly Fusarium. Wellman drew many of the sketches on the backs of United States Department of Agriculture letterhead.
1.5 archival boxes
3 folders
1.20 archival boxes
2 folders
This series consists of programs, articles, and correspondence regarding awards and conferences. Items in this series are arranged chronologically.
The earliest item is a 1953 memo from Wellman to Claud L. Horn consisting of a review of the Coffee Round-Table meeting in San Jose, Costa Rica. The latest item is a schedule from the 1980 Symposium on Rust Diseases held in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Here Wellman and North Carolina State University colleague Eddie Echandi spoke about the status of coffee rust in Latin America.
The most abundant information is about the Caribbean Division of the American Phytopathological Society, especially regarding Wellman's 1971 Award of Merit, the 1972 conference in Mexico City, and the division's 1972 honoring of eight scientists for their contributions to tropical plant pathology.
The eight scientists honored by the Caribbean Division of the A.P.S. are Agesilau A. Bitancourt, Alvaro Santos Costa, Don Edwin Ellis, Jose A. B. Nolla, Antonio Lopes Branquinho d'Oliveira, William C. Snyder, John A. Stevenson, and George A. Zentmyer. Wellman asked each man to send a copy of their cirriculum vita, which are included with the correspondence.
0.5 archival boxes
This series contains items of interest that do not fit in with other items in this collection. Some of these items relate to Wellman's profession, while others are remnants from his personal life. Included are four pamphlets advertising the DuBay products Ceresan and Semesan, a postcard and Christmas card from Portugal, a caricature of Wellman, two bulletins from the University of Denver School of Art, and a historiography of the Wellman family, including the Wellman coat of arms.
1 folder
This series consists of materials related to Wellman's professional life, although not necessarily research-oriented. The materials range from 1918 to 1969, and are arranged chronologically.
Although some of the correspondence in this series concerns Wellman's research, most of it details Wellman's job prospects and his termination from the Instituto Interamericano de Ciencias Agriacute;colas due to limited funding. Other information included in this series consists of notifications of pay raises, employment applications, civil service efficiency ratings, appointments from the Regents of the University of Wisconsin, and curriculum vitae and publication lists. Certificates from the Washington Academy of Sciences, the United States Civil Service Commission, and the United States Department of Agriculture are also included.
0.5 archival boxes
This series includes notes and outlines from Wellman's various manuscript projects. A good portion of the material stems from Wellman's book Tropical American Plant Disease. Also included are illustrations from Plants Have Diseases. Wellman also left citation information about his publications.
0.5 folders
9 items
The photographs in this collection depict research and scenery from the tropics. Boxes 11-13 contain scientific photgraphs, some of which were used in Wellman's books. Box 14 contains United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Foreign Agricultural Relations Photos from Ecuador, El Salvador, and Guatemala. Many of the photographs have descriptions on the back, describing such scenes as virus disease symptoms and different types of trees. Some of the pictures, however, contain little or no description. Some of the photographs have been converted into postcards, which are located in Box 15. Slides and an advertisement for Sandoz is also located in this box. Box 17 contains photographs that are larger than 8" x 10". Most of these photographs are USDA Foreign Agricultural Relations Photos from El Salvador.
7 photo album boxes, 1 archival box
This collection is open for research; access requires at least 48 hours advance notice. Because of the nature of certain archival formats, including digital and audio-visual materials, access to digital files may require additional advanced notice.
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Mailing address:
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Box 7111
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[Identification of item], Frederick L. Wellman Papers, MC 00347, Special Collections Research Center, North Carolina State University Libraries, Raleigh, NC
The nature of the NC State University Libraries' Special Collections means that copyright or other information about restrictions may be difficult or even impossible to determine despite reasonable efforts. The NC State University Libraries claims only physical ownership of most Special Collections materials.
The materials from our collections are made available for use in research, teaching, and private study, pursuant to U.S. Copyright law. The user must assume full responsibility for any use of the materials, including but not limited to, infringement of copyright and publication rights of reproduced materials. Any materials used for academic research or otherwise should be fully credited with the source.
This collection may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations. Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which North Carolina State University assumes no responsibility.
