[Vernacular Photograph Album and Scrapbook, Plus an Archive of Letters and Documents Relating to the Foreign Service Career of Mary J. Jennings]

[Various locations in the United States, Mexico, Europe, and Cuba, 1949. Very good.. [33] leaves, illustrated with forty-two original photographs, numerous photographic postcards, original letters and documents, newspaper and magazine extracts, and more. Oblong folio. Contemporary blindstamped limp leather, string tied. Minor rubbing to spine, light wear to covers. Plus ninety-five letters and documents, mostly typed, housed in a manila folder. A vernacular photograph album & scrapbook, plus a collection of letters and documents memorializing the foreign service career of Mary J. "Peggy" Jennings (1922-1995). Mary Jennings was born in Illinois but later moved to California with her family. She graduated from La Jolla High School in 1940 before attending college in San Diego and Arizona over the course of the next two years. She then worked various roles as a clerk and specialist for the American Foreign Service from 1942 to 1946. During her foreign service career, Jennings served at consulates and embassies in Mexico, England, Belgium, and Cuba, all of which are documented to some degree in the present collection. Following her time in the foreign service, which she was forced to leave in order to care for her ill mother, Jennings moved to Sacramento to teach adult education and language school before returning to La Jolla to open her own secretarial services firm, where she also taught Spanish and English as a Second Language to local Mexican immigrants during weeknights.

The collection begins with Jennings' personally compiled vernacular photograph album and scrapbook chronologically documenting the breadth of her four-year foreign service career during the 1940s. The album opens with newspaper extracts relating to the State Department and American relations with Mexico, where Jennings began her foreign service career as an Immigration Clerk and Interpreter/Translator. This section also includes original letters sent to Jennings regarding her consulate work in Tijuana, as well as fifteen original photographs featuring Jennings, some of her associates, and various settings around Mexico; one group photograph is captioned in ink, "Am. Consulate Staff of Tijuana, Mex 1942." The next two sections of Jennings' album relate to her brief stints in Washington, D.C. and London, England after her service in Mexico. The latter section includes magazine extracts picturing the bombings in London, a pamphlet guide to Great Britain, and Jennings' Allied Expeditionary Force Permit. The next section of the album includes material relating to Jennings' time in Belgium, where she spent a month in Brussels and six months in Antwerp as a "Citizenship Specialist." In addition to the usual magazine extracts, this section is populated with about fifteen original photographs of Jennings and her associates, as well as a few consular documents and a thirteen-page, single-spaced typed memoir of Belgium in March and July 1945 by George Gregg Fuller, detailing his experiences in the foreign service. The final section of the album contains material from Jennings' final post in the foreign service, as a Citizenship Specialist in Havana, Cuba; this section includes a few extracts along with over a dozen photographs, mostly featuring Jennings' living quarters in Havana.

The letters and documents present here include Jennings' detailed resume, retained copies of several of her letters to the American Foreign Service regarding financial matters, her resignation, and possible reappointment, among other matters; a clutch of letters documenting Jennings' hiring and early employment in the foreign service; internal letters from the AFS and the State Department regarding Mary's past and potential future employment in the foreign service; letters from foreign service personnel regarding Jennings finding employment in the foreign service; letters relating to Jennings' temporary leave from the foreign service in Mexico due to an inflamed appendix; a letter informing Jennings of her appointment to Belgium; leave requests from Jennings to take care of her ill mother, which first led to her resignation; recommendation letters on Jennings' behalf; and more. A handful of Jennings' letters from her time in Mexico and Cuba are executed by her in Spanish. There is also a grouping of foreign service serials and other documents pertaining to nationality, immigration, and naturalization cases in Mexico, as well as a February 1945 document from an American woman who married a German citizen and now seeks to have him join her in New Jersey. The document states explicitly that the German husband "has never been and is not now in sympathy with the Nazi movement in Germany." In one retained copy of a letter in 1949, Jennings writes to a recruitment officer with the U.S. Foreign Service in Los Angeles, Jennings concludes that she is "forced to conclude in all honesty that I am no longer suitable material for the Foreign Service."

According to the 1950 census, Jennings was still in the San Diego area and likely never returned to the foreign service. The present collection stands as a unique record of her time serving her country during the Second World War, where she spent time in Mexico, Europe, and Cuba working on immigration and citizenship issues for the American government. The collection offers a special opportunity to study Jennings' career from multiple standpoints -- as a language and immigration specialist, single professional woman, and displaced but adventurous American working in foreign lands during one of the world's most impactful wars.