This collection consists of 119 sheet film negatives taken by Marie Holst Pottsmith, as well as 129 access prints made by the Oregon Historical Society Research Library in 1986. Ten of the prints in this collection do not have corresponding negatives.

Pottsmith took many of the images during the eight months in 1908 that she taught in the remote Finnish community of Hamlet, Oregon. These images document the people and community life in Hamlet, including farming, the school, and construction of the first wagon road to Necanicum by residents of the village, as well as a nearby community in Elsie Valley.

Other photographs in this collection document Pottsmith’s life as a student at the University of Oregon; visits to family and friends in Portland, Salem, and Woodburn; teaching at Fisher, Washington; and her family life in Ellsworth, Washington, and in Oregon. The collection includes one image made circa 1956, when Pottsmith revisited Hamlet and photographed an abandoned farmstead she had previously photographed in 1908.