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Ann DeHuff Peters Papers

 Collection
Identifier: MSS-568-BC

Scope and Content

The Ann DeHuff Peters collection consists of eight boxes, containing seven series. Photographs are integrated into the respective series. The material in Series I, Education and Teaching Career, includes forty-five folders about Peters' career from 1946 to 1991. Information about her employment at the University of California at San Diego, including student advisee records, some correspondence, curriculum vitae, medical licensure records,... speaking engagements, extension course involvement, and continuing education information comprise the bulk of this series.

Series II, Organizational Involvement and Employment, contains the largest number of folders, 174, and covers material from 1961 to 1991. The collection has the greatest amount of information about the American Orthopsychiatric Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the National Association for the Education of Young Children. Most often, her organizational involvement or employment was associated with child health, development, and welfare, day care, or both. The files contain correspondence, some presentations and speeches, reports she helped compile, and records of her volunteer work.

The twenty-six folders in Series III, Research Materials, cover the years from 1941 to 1990 and consist mainly of newspaper clippings, reports, or magazine articles. The bulk of the research materials pertain to child health, development, and welfare, or day care. This series includes three folders about her National Association for the Education of Young Children book. Occasionally, rough drafts of Dr. Peters' writings appear in the files. Closely connected to Series III, the eighteen folders in Series IV, Ann DeHuff Peters' Publications, Presentations, and Other Writings, house rough drafts of articles and book chapters, a copy of her masters thesis, her book Early Child Care, and other publications and presentations from 1938 to 1979.

Series V, Miscellaneous Correspondence, has thirteen folders that span the years from 1968 to 1990. The correspondence pertains to general business, Peter's teaching career, research, publications, employment, and organizational involvement.

Series VI contains fifteen folders on travel from 1966 to 1983. Ann Peters either went on these trips in conjunction with her work or with her husband's work, and the trips usually combined business and pleasure.

Series VII, Personal Papers, consists of sixteen folders, that include some autobiographical writings by Peters, information about her daughters and her mother, and letters from people she considered special friends. The files cover the years from 1939 to 1991.
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Dates

  • 1938-1993

Creator

Language of Materials

English.

Access Restrictions

The Collection is open for research.

Copy Restrictions

Limited duplication of print and photographic material is allowed for research purposes. Duplication of recordings permitted only with written permission from artist, performer, interviewer and interviewee, tribal authority, or current holder of intellectual property rights. User is responsible for compliance with all copyright, privacy, and libel laws.

Biographical Information

Ann DeHuff Peters was born on March 22, 1915, in Augusta, Georgia, and moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, at the age of three with her family. The DeHuff family made the move to the "Land of Enchantment" because Ann's father suffered from tuberculosis, and, like many other health seekers, the DeHuff family fled to the sunny and dry Southwest. In New Mexico, her mother worked as a professional writer and her father taught school.

After graduating...
from Santa Fe High School, Ann started college at the University of New Mexico in 1932. At the university, she participated in various clubs and social groups. Mid-way through her education, her academic interests turned to medicine and away from library science. (Her mother had actually suggested that Ann train to be a librarian). Although putting herself through school proved trying during the heart of the Depression, Ann DeHuff graduated cum laude in 1936.

Faced with financial difficulties and some resistance to women entering medical school, Ann took an offer to attend the School of Social Work at Simmons College in Boston. In 1938, she graduated with a Masters of Social Work (M.S.W.). After receiving her M.S.W., she worked for the Children's Bureau of the Indianapolis Orphan Asylum as a caseworker in foster care and adoption. From 1942 to 1943, she worked for the same agency as a case supervisor.

In 1943, Ann went to Washington University's School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, and graduated cum laude in 1946. She met her husband, Richard Peters, at Washington University while he did a medical internship. They married on October 12, 1946, in Dwight Chapel at Yale University. From 1946 to 1947, she did post-doctorate training at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. From 1949 to 1951, Ann continued her post-doctorate work at Washington University, where she served as a fellow in Preventive Medicine and Neuropsychiatry.

After working on the medical school faculty at Washington University, Ann Peters joined the medical school faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1953. She and her family lived in North Carolina until 1969, when the Peters' moved to California where they both worked for the University of California at San Diego. Ann Peters participated in a plethora of organizations and special interest groups, including the California Children's Lobby, the American Orthopsychiatric Association, the National Association for the Education of Young Children, and the American Academy of Pediatrics, among many others. Moreover, she consulted for various local, state, and national agencies, and volunteered her time. Throughout her long career, she also wrote or co-wrote numerous articles, reports, and books. A quick glance at her most recent curriculum vitae reveals the depth and breadth of her activities.

According to Peters, her special interests included human development, especially of young infants and young children, day care for children, particularly infants and children with special needs, the training and use of nurses and other non-physician personnel in extended roles in health, and teaching and students.

Ann Peters' many interests were not limited to professional concerns, however. She and Richard Peters had four children: Joan in 1948, Deborah in 1952, Barbara in 1954, and Rick in 1955. Another child, Janet, born in 1950, died as a young baby. The challenge of being a career woman with a husband and children was one happily, if not always easily, undertaken by Ann Peters.

Ann Peters remained intellectually active until her death in 1993. She leaves behind her the rich legacy of a devoted wife, mother, and physician, who was especially concerned with the health and welfare of children and the underprivileged.
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Extent

8 boxes (8 cu. ft.), 1 oversize folder

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