John Shaw Billings Papers at the University of South Carolina

Included among the manuscript collections of the University of South Carolina are several large collections of materials from John Shaw Billings II, the grandson and namesake of John Shaw Billings. In 1983 the National Library of Medicine had most of the material in the collection relating to the elder Billings microfilmed; an additional reel was filmed in 1990. The material is found as the library's MS Film 26.

The material on the film comes from four collections. A collection of material relating specifically to the elder Billings was microfilmed in its entirety. It consists of 259 items, and includes Billings admission cards to medical school, his certification as a teacher, and copy of some of his military records. One Civil War letter from Billings to his wife is also included. Also found are letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Francis Parkman, Charles W. Eliot, and James R. Chadwick (the latter mostly relating to the unsuccessful campaigns to have Billings appointed Surgeon General of the Army). The remainder of the material is divided between the honors and tributes bestowed on him by his colleagues in the medical and library professions, and genealogical data on the Billings and Stevens families.

The second group of material on the film are letters from the Hammond, Bryan, and Cumming Families Papers collection. These are followed by volumes (some only excerpted) from the John Shaw Billings II scrapbook collection. A detailed calendar of these collections follows.

The final collection found here is the entirety of the Katharine Stevens Billings papers. These are almost all genealogical listings and correspondence.