Panama — Hepworth, T. A. C.

The Bassett Maguire collection consists of correspondence, manuscripts and typescripts, organizational records, personal papers, and research records that include field notebooks, photographs, negatives, Kodachrome slides, movie film and video, artwork, micrographics, reprints, clippings, scrapbooks and artifacts. The collection covers Dr. Maguire's career as Curator of the Intermountain Herbarium in Logan Utah throughout his career at the New York Botanical Garden. Also included are correspondence and organizational records of his affiliations with organizations such as the Association of Tropical Biology and the Organization for Flora Neotropica.

After Bassett Maguire's death in 1991, his widow Celia assumed the responsibility of organizing all aspects of her husband's papers, and she did so with dedication and commitment, from labeling folders to preparing container lists and a finding guide. A New York Times article bears witness to her careful processing of the considerable scientific material produced by her husband whose career at NYBG spanned close to fifty years.

While every effort was made to retain the structure and original order of Mrs. Maguire's finding guide, some adjustment was necessary. Multiple copies of letters, reports and material documented in other Records of the Herbarium were removed. Her guide listed some items that were not located, while other material from the many unprocessed boxes left to the Mertz Library after her death in 2014 needed to be incorporated. In addition, Mrs. Maguire worked in a pre-digital world and the guide required a more compatible format for the web. With these factors in mind, some series were expanded or re-ordered and a few new ones were added. Current series are organized strictly by alphabet while others are primarily chronological, geographical or by subject. Mrs. Maguire's original finding guide is available in Series 16 as it provides annotations, insight and detail that may be helpful to future researchers.